Knowledge gaps in economic costs of invasive alien fish worldwide

Funding Information: The authors acknowledge the very helpful input from the anonymous reviewers. Further, the authors acknowledge the French National Research Agency (ANR-14-CE02-0021) and the BNP-Paribas Foundation Climate Initiative for funding the Inva Cost project that allowed the construction of the InvaCost database. The present work was conducted following a workshop funded by the AXA Research Fund Chair of Invasion Biology and is part of the AlienScenario project funded by BiodivERsA and Belmont-Forum call 2018 on biodiversity scenarios. RNC is funded by a Research Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. CD is funded by the BiodivERsA-Belmont Forum Project ?Alien Scenarios? (BMBF/PT DLR 01LC1807C). Funding Information: The authors acknowledge the very helpful input from the anonymous reviewers. Further, the authors acknowledge the French National Research Agency (ANR-14-CE02-0021) and the BNP-Paribas Foundation Climate Initiative for funding the Inva Cost project that allowed the construction of the InvaCost database. The present work was conducted following a workshop funded by the AXA Research Fund Chair of Invasion Biology and is part of the AlienScenario project funded by BiodivERsA and Belmont-Forum call 2018 on biodiversity scenarios. RNC is funded by a Research Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation . CD is funded by the BiodivERsA-Belmont Forum Project “Alien Scenarios” (BMBF/PT DLR 01LC1807C). Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Elsevier B.V.Invasive alien fishes have had pernicious ecological and economic impacts on both aquatic ecosystems and human societies. However, a comprehensive and collective assessment of their monetary costs is still lacking. In this study, we collected and reviewed reported data on the economic impacts of invasive alien fishes using InvaCost, the most comprehensive global database of invasion costs. We analysed how total (i.e. both observed and potential/predicted) and observed (i.e. empirically incurred only) costs of fish invasions are distributed geographically and temporally and assessed which socioeconomic sectors are most affected. Fish invasions have potentially caused the economic loss of at least US$37.08 billion (US2017 value) globally, from just 27 reported species. North America reported the highest costs (>85% of the total economic loss), followed by Europe, Oceania and Asia, with no costs yet reported from Africa or South America. Only 6.6% of the total reported costs were from invasive alien marine fish.The costs that were observed amounted to US$2.28 billion (6.1% of total costs), indicating that the costs of damage caused by invasive alien fishes are often extrapolated and/or difficult to quantify. Most of the observed costs were related to damage and resource losses (89%). Observed costs mainly affected public and social welfare (63%), with the remainder borne by fisheries, authorities and stakeholders through management actions, environmental, and mixed sectors. Total costs related to fish invasions have increased significantly over time, from