COMPARISON OF TAXON-SPECIFIC AND TAXON-GENERIC RISK SCREENING TOOLS TO IDENTIFY POTENTIALLY INVASIVE NON-NATIVE FISHES IN THE RIVER NERETVA CATCHMENT (BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA AND CROATIA)

Abstract

The Freshwater Fish Invasiveness Screening Kit (FISK) v2 and Aquatic Species Invasiveness Screening Kit (AS-ISK) risk identification screening tools were used to assess the invasiveness potential of 24 non-native (NNS) freshwater fish species in the River Neretva catchment (Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia), a risk assessment (RA) area that is an important Mediterranean hotspot for fish endemism. The two assessors assigned similar scores for the invasiveness potential of the NN fishes, and both screening tools successfully distinguished invasive from non-invasive species. Mean calibrated threshold scores were 10.25 for FISK and 10.00 for AS-ISK, with the latter increasing to 12.62 when questions that assess the likely impact of predicted future climate conditions on the RA were taken into consideration. These relatively low threshold values are characteristic of areas with an elevated number of translocated species and suggest that NN fishes pose a considerable threat to native species and ecosystems. FISK ranked 50.0-62.6% of the species as being of 'high risk' compared with 58.4-59.3% using AS-ISK. The highest scores ('very high risk') were attributed to gibel carp Carassius gibelio (Bloch, 1782) and pikeperch Sander lucioperca (Linnaeus, 1758). The generic screening tool for aquatic species (AS-ISK) provided similar risk rankings to its predecessor, FISK, as regards invasiveness potential. For this reason, it is likely to be an effective tool for evaluating the potential invasion risk of NNS freshwater fishes for other RA areas in the Balkans. Copyright (C) 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.