Quantifying the probability of a successful marine bioinvasion due to source-destination risk factors.

The increasing spread of marine non-indigenous species (NIS) due to the growth in global shipping traffic is causing widespread concern for the ecological and economic impacts of marine bioinvasions. Risk management authorities need tools to identify pathways and source regions of priority concern to better target efforts for preventing NIS introduction. The probability of a successful NIS introduction is affected by the likelihood that a marine species entrained in a transport vector will survive the voyage between origin and destination locations and establish an independently reproducing population at the destination. Three important risk factors are voyage duration, range of environmental conditions encountered during transit and environmental similarity between origin and destination. In this study, we aimed for a globally comprehensive approach to assembling quantifications of source-destination risk factors from every potential origin to every potential destination. To derive estimates of voyage-related marine biosecurity risk, we used computer-simulated vessel paths between pairs of ecoprovinces in the Marine Ecoregions Of the World biogeographic classification system. We used the physical length of each path to calculate voyage duration risk and the cross-latitudinal extent of the path to calculate voyage path risk. Environmental similarity risk was based on comparing annual average sea surface temperature and salinity within each ecoprovince to those of other ecoprovinces. We derived three separate sets of risk quantifications, one each for voyage duration, voyage path and environmental similarity. Our quantifications can be applied to studies that require source-destination risk estimates. They can be used separately or combined, depending on the importance of the types of source-destination risks that might be relevant to particular scientific or risk management questions or applications.

Pest Alert Tool-a web-based application for flagging species of concern in metabarcoding datasets.

Advances in high-throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies and their increasing affordability have fueled environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding data generation from freshwater, marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Research institutions worldwide progressively employ HTS for biodiversity assessments, new species discovery and ecological trend monitoring. Moreover, even non-scientists can now collect an eDNA sample, send it to a specialized laboratory for analysis and receive in-depth biodiversity record from a sampling site. This offers unprecedented opportunities for biodiversity assessments across wide temporal and spatial scales. The large volume of data produced by metabarcoding also enables incidental detection of species of concern, including non-indigenous and pathogenic organisms. We introduce an online app-Pest Alert Tool-for screening nuclear small subunit 18S ribosomal RNA and mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit I datasets for marine non-indigenous species as well as unwanted and notifiable marine organisms in New Zealand. The output can be filtered by minimum length of the query sequence and identity match. For putative matches, a phylogenetic tree can be generated through the National Center for Biotechnology Information's BLAST Tree View tool, allowing for additional verification of the species of concern detection. The Pest Alert Tool is publicly available at https://pest-alert-tool-prod.azurewebsites.net/.

Cryopreservation of six Symbiodiniaceae genera and assessment of fatty acid profiles in response to increased salinity treatments.

Symbiodiniaceae are a diverse group of dinoflagellates, the majority of which are free-living and/or associated with a variety of protists and other invertebrate hosts. Maintenance of isolated cultures is labour-intensive and expensive, and cryopreservation provides an excellent avenue for their long-term storage. We aimed to cryopreserve 15 cultured isolates from six Symbiodiniaceae genera using dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) as the cryoprotectant agent (CPA). Under 15% DMSO, 10 isolates were successfully cryopreserved using either rapid freezing or controlled-rate freezing. Cultures that failed or had low survival, were subjected to (1) a reduction of CPA to 10%, or (2) increased salinity treatment before freezing. At 10% DMSO, three further isolates were successfully cryopreserved. At 15% DMSO there were high cell viabilities in Symbiodinium pilosum treated with 44 parts per thousand (ppt) and 54 ppt culture medium. An isolate of Fugacium sp. successfully cryopreserved after salinity treatments of 54 ppt and 64 ppt. Fatty acid (FA) analyses of S. pilosum after 54 ppt salinity treatment showed increased saturated FA levels, whereas Fugacium sp. had low poly-unsaturated FAs compared to normal salinity (34 ppt). Understanding the effects of salinity and roles of FAs in cryopreservation will help in developing protocols for these ecologically important taxa.

An open-source geospatial framework for beach litter monitoring.

Here, we present a framework for a beach litter monitoring process, based on free and open-source software (FOSS), which allows customization for any sampling design. The framework was developed by means of a GIS project (QGIS), a GIS collector (QField), and an R code, allowing further adjustments according to the area to be surveyed and research questions. The aim is to improve data collection, accessibility, and interoperability, as well as to help to fill the currently existing gap between fieldwork and data analysis, preventing typos and allowing better data processing. Therefore, it is expected to take less than an hour from ending fieldwork to obtaining up-to-date products. To test the developed open-source geospatial framework, it was applied in different sectors and dates on an important southern Brazilian touristic beach. Results obtained from the open-source geospatial framework application produce baseline information on beach litter issues, such as amounts, sources, and spatial and temporal patterns. Adoption of the framework can facilitate data collection by local and regional stakeholders, and the results obtained from it can be applied to support management strategies. For researchers, it produces spatialized data for each item in an already tidy format, which can be used for robust and complex models. A series of supplementary files support reproducibility and provide a guide to future users.