The faunal Ponto-Caspianization of central and western European waterways

Abstract As alien invasive species are a key driver of biodiversity loss, understanding patterns rapidly changing global compositions depends upon knowledge population dynamics and trends at large scales. Within this context, the Ponto-Caspian region is among most notable donor regions for aquatic in Europe. Using macroinvertebrate time series collected over 52 years (1968–2020) 265 sites across 11 central western European countries, we examined occurrences, invasion rates, abundances freshwater fauna. We whether: (i) successive invasions follow consistent pattern composition pioneered by same species, (ii) accelerates subsequent rates. In our dataset, macroinvertebrates increased from two 1972 to 29 2012. This trend was parallelled non-significant increasing taxa. Trends invader richness significantly time. found relatively uniform distribution Europe without any relation distance their native region. The that arrived first were often bivalves (46.5% cases), particularly Dreissena polymorpha , followed secondarily amphipods (83.8%; primarily Chelicorophium curvispinum Dikerogammarus villosus ) . between consecutive decreased coarse regional scale, suggesting previous establishments may facilitate Should continue translocate region, results suggest high potential future success highly connected waters. However, each species’ decline after an initial ‘boom’ phase or arrival new resulting different dominating