Abstract
Clams belonging to the genus Corbicula are considered one of the most harmful freshwater invaders with strong economic and ecological impacts. In South America, they were first detected in 1979 in the Río de La Plata estuary and since then they have rapidly spread throughout the north of Argentina. To the south, the Corbicula clam began appearing in the Colorado (~ 38°S) and Negro River (~ 40°S) basins around 1997–1999, and in the Limay and Neuquén Rivers (~ 38°S) around 2005. Almost twenty years later, this invasive clam reached the Chubut River (Chubut Province, Argentina). Here, we report for the first time the presence of Corbicula in the Chubut River (43.29° S), which represents the southernmost record of this invasive bivalve in the world. The most likely introduction pathway for the Corbicula clam in the Chubut River is ballast water associated with an estuarine port. Special attention is now required to detect the range of the invasion along the Chubut River basin and adjacent river basins such as Chico River to evaluate the ecological effects and the potential economic impacts on the industry.
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Data availability
The specimens analyzed during the current study are available in the Invertebrate Collection of IBIOMAR (CNP-Inv 4039 to 4043).
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Acknowledgements
We thank V. López, S. Lopez Trovant, Milton Junyten and Juan Pablo San Martín (Servicoop Ltd.), and Yanina Hildeman for their help in the field activities.
Funding
This work was partially supported by the PICT-2019-03433 of the Agencia Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by BT, JS and NB. The first draft of the manuscript was written by BT and all authors commented on posterior versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Trovant, B., Signorelli, J.H. & Battini, N. Invasive pest spreads beyond the last frontier: Corbicula clam in the Chubut River, Patagonia. Limnology 24, 1–8 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10201-022-00708-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10201-022-00708-z