Da Ecologia às políticas públicas ... O que as espécies não nativas têm a nos ensinar?

Abstract

The non-native species establishment in new habitats is a reconized and harmful process for biodiversity conservation. Despite its negative impacts, this process tends to continue due to the increase in international trading among countries and continents. Thus, it is important to analyze the factors related to the establishment success of these species in new habitats, mainly for fish that are introduced due to use in aquiculture and sporting fisheries. Thus, we may allow us to control and eradicate them more effectively as well as to reduce or avoid new species introductions paying attention to political decisions. Firstly, we tested the hypothesis that that non-native species have larger body sizes in their invaded areas than in their natural ones. We showed that this hypothesis in incomplete, since it disconsiders the effects of the environmental conditions on non-native species' body sizes. We also studied the influence of biological and environmental factors on the infection patterns of parasites. Only host abundances explained the infection pattern cause by those parasites. To conclude, we analysed the Proposed Act of Law 5989/09, which allows and encourages the non-native fish species in Brazilian reservoirs and showing the potential negative impacts once this Act is passed in the Brazilian Congress.