In for the kill: novel biosecurity approaches for invasive and medically important mosquito species

Abstract

In the last ten years Araipama gigas, commonly known as pirarucu, expanded its distribution upstream into the Madeira River rapids where it is not a native species. The invasion was favored by escapes from Peruvian fish farms upstream in the Madeira River Basin, where they have been raising pirarucu since the 1970s. Although the Madeira River rapids had formerly represented a geographical barrier to this invasion by limiting floodplain habitats, the construction of the Santo Antônio and Jirau dams in 2011 flooded the two most important falls, replacing the rapids stretch with a lentic or semi-lentic habitat favoring the invasion of A. gigas. Since construction of the dams, fisheries reports have been marked by the decrease of traditional commercial species, coupled with the presence of invasive populations of A. gigas. This example highlights a major emergent threat to artisanal fishing in the Amazonian freshwater system: government policies favoring dam construction and the consequent spread of native fish species used in aquaculture to new regions upstream of waterfalls where they are not native.

Better off dead: assessment of aquatic disinfectants and thermal shock treatments to prevent the spread of invasive freshwater bivalves

“…For both Dreissena species, complete mortality was reliably achieved following steam exposure for C 30 s. This result is consistent with the high levels of efficacy reported for steam spray treatments by a number of other studies, concerning bivalve (Coughlan et al 2019a;Joyce et al 2019), crustacean (Bradbeer et al 2020), dipteran (Cuthbert et al 2020) and macrophyte species (Crane et al 2019;Coughlan et al 2020). Similarly, exposure to a hot air jet for C 10 s consistently caused complete mortality of D. polymorpha specimens, demonstrating the potential application of this novel treatment for improved biosecurity practices.…”

“…Stebbing and Rimmer 2014;Shannon et al 2018), as well as facilitating the on-going suppression of established populations (Coughlan et al 2018b;2019b). For example, applications of steam have been found to kill a number of invasive macrophyte (Crane et al 2019) and invertebrate species (Bradbeer et al 2020;Joyce et al 2019;Cuthbert et al 2020). However, further assessment of steam as a tool for IAS decontamination is still required, especially for the identification of optimal and species-specific treatments (Bradbeer et al 2020;Crane et al 2019).…”

A purified lectin with larvicidal activity from a woodland mushroom, Agaricus semotus Fr.

“…Although majorly found in Africa, C. quinquefasciatus usually spread beyond their domiciled environment, posing a severe risk to public health (Farnesi et al 2015;Cuthbert et al 2020). As part of control measures to curb mosquito establishment and proliferation, the World Health Organization (WHO) introduced a manual on the management of these quintessential vectors (Takken and van den Berg 2019).…”

Modelling the damage costs of invasive alien species

“…For these insects, the invasion front of the yellow fever mosquito A. aegypti is expected to increase significantly in the future (Iwamura et al 2020), indicating that associated costs will heighten further with climate change. Similarly, the congeneric A. albopictus, which produces desiccation-tolerant and freeze-resistant eggs (Medlock et al 2012;Cuthbert et al 2020), is likely to continue to spread through pathways such as the used tire and ornamental plant trades in temperate regions, as has occurred in Europe (Medlock et al 2012). Such invasive range increases are exacerbated by climate change, especially for ectothermic animals (Bellard et al 2013).…”