Alien I Will Survive

Tompkins: Cataloging alien and invasive species

To most people, the pretty minnow with the blue fringe coloration on its fins would have been just another little fish among the dozens recently collected from a stream in northwest Houston.

But to someone intimately familiar with the native species of topminnow killifish, gambusia, darters and other small fish inhabiting local waterways, the fish was an enigma.

"It wasn't a species I'd ever seen," Dr. George Guillen, professor of biology at the University of Houston-Clear Lake and executive director of the Environmental Institute of Houston, said of the fish collected by students.

There was a good reason for that. The jewel-like minnow, known as a bluefin killifish, isn't native to Texas; it's endemic only to parts of Florida.

Its discovery in that little stream marked only the second time a bluefin killifish had been documented in Texas. The only other occurrence, in 2008, was in the lower Guadalupe River system, where its introduction was traced to having hitched a hidden ride in a shipment of plants used in a wetland rehabilitation project near Victoria.

With those discoveries, Texas added another species to its long and growing list of alien species and improved the knowledge of its distribution in the state.

It's too early to know if the bluefin killifish will turn from alien to invasive species — a non-native organism that causes ecological or economic damage. It's also too early to know if it will spread or even survive in Texas.

But simply knowing bluefin killifish are out there and where they can be found is hugely important information for scientists trying to understand and monitor the spread and impact of the growing number of alien/invasive species in Texas.

Gathering and compiling such basic knowledge of alien/invasive species is the goal of an intense, weeklong effort wrapping up today and involving approximately 50 scientists scattered across the terrestrial and aquatic landscape around Galveston Bay.

Termed the Texas Rapid Assessment Team — Galveston, the group includes scientists from across the spectrum of disciplines and expertise conducting surveys and collecting samples to document all the alien/invasive species they can find. Their focus is strictly the Galveston Bay area, particularly the watersheds feeding the bay.

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