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Linking demographic and habitat suitability modelling identifies the environmental determinants of successfully controlling invasive common carp (Cyprinus carpio) in south-eastern Australia

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Abstract

Common carp (Cyprinus carpio) are a serious invasive species of riverine habitats in Australia and several control measures have been proposed. The strategy and potential success of any control measure will be influenced by carp population dynamics. Carp survival and distribution are driven by abiotic environmental factors (e.g., water flow rates and habitat availability), which vary greatly in space and time in Australian river systems. To inform realistic control strategies, we developed a mechanistic (process-based) carp metapopulation model with parameters explicitly linked to spatio-temporal estimates of habitat suitability. To demonstrate the use of this model, we evaluated how recovery times following a one-time management action (that results in population reduction) varied across five river catchments in the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB), eastern Australia, using reconstructed environmental conditions from the early 1990s to 2016. We found that recovery time at the catchment scale can be highly dependent on the flood-drought cycle, with recovery varying from to 2 to 10 years between wet and dry periods. In more stable catchments, however, ~ 6 years (range 4–8 years) is more likely. Our results are consistent with the paradigm that carp are a highly successful invasive species, with strong recovery potential, especially during periods of access to quality nursery habitat (i.e., during floodplain and wetland inundation).

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Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the National Carp Control Plan for their support and feedback on this work. We also thank the team from the Biomass Project, Ivor Stuart, Ben Fanson, Shane Brooks, and Jarrod Lyon (Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research) for their feedback and work in supplying spatial biomass datasets, and Dean Gilligan for supplying the electrofishing datasets. Thank you also to the three anonymous reviewers and editor, Dr. Peter Sorensen, for their thoughtful comments, which helped improve this work.

Funding

This research was funded by the Australian National Carp Control Plan, Fisheries Research and Development Corporation Project Number 2016-170.

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  1. Jess Hopf

    Present address: Hatfield Marine Science Center, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Science, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Jess Hopf & Stephen Davis

  2. CSIRO Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness, Geelong, VIC, Australia

    Kerryne Graham & Peter A. Durr

  3. CSIRO Land & Water, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Danial Stratford

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Contributions

Conceptualization: JH, SD, KG and PD; methodology: all authors; formal analysis and coding: JH; writing—original draft preparation: JH; writing—review and editing: all authors; visualisation: JH; supervision: SD and PD; project administration: SD and PD; funding acquisition: PD. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jess Hopf.

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Hopf, J., Davis, S., Graham, K. et al. Linking demographic and habitat suitability modelling identifies the environmental determinants of successfully controlling invasive common carp (Cyprinus carpio) in south-eastern Australia. Biol Invasions 26, 651–670 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-023-03198-x

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