Invader ID

Why Study Fouling Communities?

The communities of organisms that live under docks and ship hulls, known as fouling communities, are full of a wide variety of invertebrate animals, algae, and microbes. Because fouling communities are in shallow, coastal areas, they are strongly influenced by local environmental conditions, such as changes in temperature and salinity. Fouling communities are also impacted by human activities. Recreational and commercial boats and ships can move organisms from one place to another. Sometimes, these new, introduced organisms won't survive in their new environment, but if they do, they may become established as invasive species (learn more about the difference between non-native, introduced, and invasive species here). Invasive species can have major impacts on ecosystems by competing with native species for food and space, which can change the whole structure of the fouling community. Coastal communities spend millions of dollars a year to detect and remove invasive species. By better understanding fouling communities and the impacts of invasive species, we can help people in coastal areas respond to these invasions more effectively.

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Where Do the Photos Come From?

Since 1994, the Marine Invasions Lab at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center has conducted surveys of fouling communities from bays throughout the United States, as well as surveys in bays in Australia, Canada, Belize, Ecuador, and Panama. To conduct our surveys, we suspend plastic tiles from the edges of docks and piers, so that they hang upside down in the water. This work is usually done by staff scientists, but volunteers have helped with this in the past (and we hope can do a lot more in the future!).

Each tile hangs in the water for three months. During that time, lots of organisms attach to the tile and start growing. After three months, we collect the tiles and bring them back to the lab, where scientists identify all of the organisms that are growing on the tiles. We also take photographs of each tile.

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What Are We Trying to Learn?

By tracking changes in the types of organisms and how abundant different groups of organisms are, we can see how ecosystems are changing over time. We are particularly interested in how introducing new organisms to an area can change the numbers and types of other organisms in the fouling community. By doing surveys of bays through time, we can see how the types and abundances of the organisms change, and how different species interact with one another. It also gives us a chance to detect new invasive species before they become problematic.

Researchers use the data collected through the fouling community surveys to look at how fouling communities change through time and between one location and another. They combine that information with other data, such as weather data, to try to understand what causes the patterns that they observe. By understanding these patterns, we can better predict which species are likely to invade nearby areas and what kinds of impacts they could have.

The survey data also helps us understand whether or not efforts to prevent invasions or limit the impact of invasions are working. We share our findings with natural resource managers and policy makers so that they can implement the most effective strategies possible to deal with marine invasive species.

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We Need Your Help!

By looking at how the groups of organisms change through time, we will better understand how human activities affect coastal environments. We can understand these patterns most effectively when we have data from lots of places over several years. Currently, our scientists do all of the identifications by looking at the actual tiles. This is a time consuming process and limits the number of bays that we can survey.

With the help of citizen scientists, we hope to be able to increase the number of tiles (and the amount of data) that we have to work with. So, we’re excited to have your help! We look forward to building a community of citizen scientists who are interested in marine animals to learn more about fouling communities in more places, find new species, or watch as these communities change over time – something that we predict will become more important as climate change affects coasts worldwide.

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Partners

The images on Invader ID come from a variety of groups. We are excited to be able to work with these partners to expand the areas we can monitor.

Dr. Brian Cheng, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Centre, Fisheries and Oceans Canada