Authors: Abigail I Jacobs Reuben P Keller
Publish Date: 2016/11/10
Volume: 19, Issue: 2, Pages: 635-646
Abstract
The Laurentian Great Lakes and the Mississippi River are two of the largest freshwater ecosystems in North America and each contains large numbers of nonnative species In 1900 the Great Lakes and Mississippi were permanently connected with the opening of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal in the US state of Illinois More recently movement of trailered boats bait and other overland vectors have increased and further enabled movement of nonnative aquatic species To investigate the role of Illinois in continentwide species spread we assembled a comprehensive database of recorded occurrences of aquatic nonnative species in Illinois inland waters For each species we determined vector location current stage in the invasion sequence introduced or established and ecological impacts The arrival of nonnative species has accelerated over time Sixty species are now established and a further 39 have been recorded The Great Lakes have been a stronger source of species to Illinois and the Mississippi River basin than the reverse Over the last two decades the most important vectors delivering nonnative aquatic species have been unintentional release and shipping Through a survey of Illinois aquatic ecologists we found that established species exhibit a continuous range of ecological impacts and that almost a third have high or very high ecological impacts Local national and continental approaches will be required to mitigate the threat of further invasive species spreading into Illinois and between the Great Lakes and Mississippi basinsFunding for this project was provided by a grant to RPK from US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources Ellen Cole provided useful feedback on early drafts and Kevin Scheiwiller assisted with data processing We thank all of the experts who gave their time to help us to locate and interpret data and the experts who rated the impacts of species We thank the two reviewers who each provided helpful comments
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