Round Goby: A story of invasion success in the Baltic

Round goby Neogobius melanostomus is one of the most successful invasive fish species. From its origin, the Ponto-Caspian region, the euryhaline species invaded different locations worldwide. In 1990 first individuals were observed in the Great Lakes in North America and within a very short period, the goby became a pervasive fish species there. At the same time, first observations were recorded in the Gulf of Gdansk (Baltic Sea). Since then N. melanostomus spread across the Baltic region and different European river systems such as Rhine, Elbe, the Belgian Albert Canal and the Danube. Within the BONUS project Bio-C³ we used, N. melanostomus as model organism to investigate the mechanisms of invasions and their impact on local Baltic ecosystems. Here we present results of a chronological analysis of the round goby invasion in the eastern German part of the Baltic. We statistically evaluated different data sources on the occurrence of N. melanostomus to retrace the invasion history within this region. Our main sources of information were scientific surveys conducted with different fishing gears (e.g. bottom trawls, beach seine) and interviews with fishermen. Our data showed that N. melanostomus occured since 1999 in the German part of the Pomeranian Bay and has permanently inhabited different habitat types. Furthermore, first investigations on the trophic interactions of round goby have shown that the species has already adapted to local available prey as well as become a prominent prey itself for local predators