The Biology of the Lionfish Invasion

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klausi

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Messages
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Location
Dumaguete, Philippines
# of dives
2500 - 4999
Hi all, I am presently preparing my lecture notes for a class in conservation biology, and one focus of the class will be invasive species. Hence I read up on the lionfish invasion of the Caribbean, and I am hoping that the topic is interesting for the community here.

I wrote my conclusions from reading the literature on the lionfish invasion up in a blog post. In brief, the lionfish is an ideal invasive species: mid-sized, fast reproducing, a food generalist (hunts all kinds of small fishes), venomous and not fitting any "prey" pattern seen in the Caribbean by predatory fishes. On top of that, it entered a stressed ecosystem, with lots of overfishing (eliminating the big fish which could eat lionfish) and too much coastal degradation.

And, I also made a lionfish video, with all the footage from the fish's native range, in the Philippines, but the narration and the maps which I show discuss the lionfish as an invader. Enjoy!
 
Thanks for posting that. I really enjoyed your video. One question though, you mentioned the lack of predators in the Caribbean. What are their predators in the Pacific?

Thanks again!
 
Glad you enjoyed the video. The predators are sharks and large groupers, which in principle exist in the Caribbean, they are fished out in many places though. Predation can happen at any stage from the larva to the adult, and I believe early in life the predators of lionfish are unknown. Also, parasites could play a role to keep the population down, which is not well understood yet in this species.

Thanks for posting that. I really enjoyed your video. One question though, you mentioned the lack of predators in the Caribbean. What are their predators in the Pacific?

Thanks again!
 
A few weeks ago I did a dive off the north shore of St Croix. The dive masters said that the local reef sharks either could not or would not kill a lionfish, but were quite happy to eat them once someone killed it for them. This resulted in my closest ever shark encounter when a pair of them came up to check if we had spears on us or not - once they saw we didn't, they swam off.

So what is different from the sharks in the Pacific versus the sharks in the Caribbean? Based on the behaviour I saw, I'm not sure that it's just a numbers thing...
 
We have a couple of species of Lionfish here in the UAE and they're not so prolific that you would see them on every dive, so I assume we have suitable predators locally too.
 
East Mediterranean is under invasion by Lionfish, but way worse is the puffer fish invasion -> agocephalus spadiceus, lagocephalus suezensis, lagocephalus guentheri, sphoeroides pachygaster, torquigener flavimaculosus, tylerius spinosissimus.
 
East Mediterranean is under invasion by Lionfish, but way worse is the puffer fish invasion -> agocephalus spadiceus, lagocephalus suezensis, lagocephalus guentheri, sphoeroides pachygaster, torquigener flavimaculosus, tylerius spinosissimus.
Yes, the Suez canal opened a can of fishes. I assume the colder temperatures in most of the Mediterranean limit the invasions somewhat, at least further north? That's also changing, of course.
 
Glad you enjoyed the video. The predators are sharks and large groupers, which in principle exist in the Caribbean, they are fished out in many places though. Predation can happen at any stage from the larva to the adult, and I believe early in life the predators of lionfish are unknown. Also, parasites could play a role to keep the population down, which is not well understood yet in this species.

There's a great video of a Bobbitt worm taking a lion fish in the blink of an eye. I think that's where the idea for the movie "Tremors' came from.
 
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