Intensifying hurricanes are helping invasive species spread across the U.S. - National Geographic

Intensifying hurricanes are helping invasive species spread across the U.S. - National Geographic

Intensifying hurricanes are helping invasive species spread across the U.S. - National Geographic

Posted: 27 Oct 2020 12:00 AM PDT

With record-breaking intensity, the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season has surged past the average 12 named storms per year. When Hurricane Zeta made landfall in Mexico on October 26, it became the 27th named storm of the season and 11th named hurricane.While hurricanes are notorious for producing tornados and causing widespread destruction, they have another devastating, yet lesser-known effect: Spreading invasive species to new habitats. (Here's how hurricanes form—and why they're so destructive.)When Hurricane Isaias slammed into the Caribbean and eastern U.S. this summer, rising water levels allowed at least 114 non-native aquatic species to ride from one watershed to the next, according to the United States Geological Survey's Nonindigenous Aquatic Species team.Since 2017, the scientists have combined flood data and invasive species sightings to map how these animals disperse following Atlantic Ocean hurricanes, as well as study what makes some species more likely to benefit from the storms than others.Take the apple snail, a family of large freshwater mollusks popular among aquarium owners. Native to South America, the six-inch species first came to America via the aquarium trade, and it has since become a destructive pest in rice fields and other aquatic croplands. Apple snails "actually take air into their shell and float along the water," says Wesley Daniel, a fishery biologist with the USGS Wetland and Aquatic Research Center in Florida, whose tropical climate has made it a hot spot for invasives. "We've seen them spread in numerous hurricanes on the Gulf Coast and in Florida like this."Since apple snails were already established in many coastal freshwater ecosystems throughout the southeastern U.S., it's likely that the recent active hurricane season has pushed them farther inland. Not only have hurricanes and tropical storms formed far earlier this year than usual, 10 have made landfall on the mainland U.S., smashing a record set in 1916.

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