Pacific islands Marine bioinvasions Alert Network “PacMAN”
The project will develop a national invasive species monitoring system as well as an early-warning decision-support tool for Pacific SIDS, offering a user-friendly dashboard indicating the potential presence of invasive species (including pathogens and pest species) or risk of invasions to support local management. The project will achieve this goal through a work plan that includes (i) needs assessment and review of current best practices in detecting invasive species; (ii) training of local scientists in field sampling, sample processing, DNA sequencing and data management; (iii) establishing and operating national invasive species monitoring plans; (iv) building a bioinformatics pipeline to improve the availability of metabarcoding data from biofouling communities and feed these into global data infrastructures and (v) develop the decision-support tool. Strong stakeholder engagement will ensure that the marine bioinvasions monitoring plan and the information and services of the decision-support tool contribute to and meet the requirements of local management (triggering rapid response).