Cothurnia limnoriae - NSCEP | US EPA - US Environmental ...

(Figures 61 and 62, Tables 1-12) for the summary of the distributional, habitat, and natural
history information for each species.
Besides providing basic information on the biogeographic and natural history of North Pacific
near-coastal species, the information in the Atlas and PICES database can be used to address a
number of management issues:
1. Establish a baseline of the number and identity of the reported NIS by MEOW
ecoregion. By coupling these data with rapid assessment surveys (RAS) and/or
monitoring programs it becomes possible to assess whether a NIS reported from a region
represents a new invasion.
2. Collating data on life history and environmental requirements for NIS can help identify
what habitats and resources will be at greatest risk to a range expansion of an existing
NIS or to invasion by a new NIS.
3. Analysis of source (native) region(s) of NIS can be used to determine high risk regions
and to develop focused quarantine procedures for imports.
4. On a global scale, enumeration of the total number of ecoregions invaded by a species
can help identify high risk invaders. Further, the maps in the Atlas are a simple and visual
approach to conveying the distribution of these species to managers and the public.
5. The Atlas disseminates information about NIS to the public and managers in an easily
used format.
6. Development of standardized protocols in the Altas and database provide a framework
for developing countries to use in their efforts to assess and manage invasive species.
As a real world example of the use of such baseline information, the authors recently developed
an approach to setting ballast water discharge standards based on historical invasion rates,
historical ballast discharge rates, and organism concentrations in untreated ballast water (Reusser
et al., in press). Another example is the use of global patterns of invaders as a screening
procedure for potential invaders (Reusser and Lee, 2005; Locke, 2009).
Caveats
This Atlas and PICES database are initial attempts at synthesizing a variety of data types across
an entire ocean basin, and as such they represent the state of the science. However, they are not
the final answer. We are aware that we have not captured the complete biogeographic
distributions or natural history profiles of many of the species. Additionally, there may be errors
in interpretation on our part. Rather than a deficit, we hope that illustrating the existing
knowledge in a standardized fashion will assist in identifying any such errors and in highlighting
key information gaps. In many cases, we classified species scattered around the globe with
limited information. As such, the classifications presented here should be taken as “hypotheses”
subject to further taxonomic, biogeographical, and genetic analysis.
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