Alexandra Meira‡, Francisco Carvalho‡, Paulo Castro‡, Ronaldo Sousa‡Corresponding author: Alexandra Meira ( alexagmeira@gmail.com ) © Alexandra Meira, Francisco Carvalho, Paulo Castro, Ronaldo Sousa. This is an open access preprint distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Citation:
Meira A, Carvalho F, Castro P, Sousa R (2024) Applications of biosensors to overcome monitoring challenges in freshwater invasive species. ARPHA Preprints. https://doi.org/10.3897/arphapreprints.e129002 |  |
Global technological advances have boosted the discovery of new tools that have increased the ability to obtain large and high-quality ecological data with the potential to rapidly develop knowledge on how species behave and interact in ecosystems. Comprehensive time-series datasets on the in situ behaviour and dispersal of wild organisms are essential for addressing fundamental ecological and physiological questions regarding invasive freshwater species. In this review, we address how biosensors can be useful in assessing movement, internal states, behaviour, and data of the surrounding environment in freshwater invasive species considering the state of the art and also discussing possibilities of research for the near future.
For this, we performed a systematic review of the available literature and retrieved a total number of 132 scientific studies corresponding to 140 records of sensors being used. Most studies used radio telemetry (40%; n=53) followed by acoustic telemetry (34%; n=45) and PIT telemetry (20%; n=26) to study invasive species. The taxonomic group most studied was fish (72%; n=109), followed by crustaceans (14%; n=21) and amphibians (5%; n=8). The most addressed topics included species behaviour assessment (72%; n=101), species physiology (10%; n=14), and management (9%; n=12). The number of studies started noticeably increasing since 2006, with the majority of them being performed in North America (55%; n=73), followed by Europe (30%; n=40) and Oceania (7%; n=9). The collected information provided by biosensors can be useful to better understand the dynamics and impacts of cryptic invasive species and can be applied in the management of biological invasions.
We also address future directions concerning the use of biosensors in freshwater invasive species (e.g. underwater internet systems, artificial intelligence, crittercams). Overall, these technologies provide unique possibilities in the field of biological invasions in freshwater ecosystems and the development of new technologies to address their limitations will increase the amount and reliability of the data gathered with possible payoffs on the management process.