Brazil’s Free Platform Maps Six Years of Marine Invasive Species Records

Along Brazil’s 8,000-kilometer coast, records of marine and estuarine non-native species have long been scattered across journal articles, theses, technical reports and books, many of them difficult to find or locked behind paywalls. A team of Brazilian researchers has now described how they spent six years pulling that fragmented information together into a single, freely accessible online resource. The Brazilian Biological Invasion Platform, known as Bioinvasão Brasil, was launched in 2019 and, as of April 2025, compiles 339 marine species found in the country alongside more than 6,200 georeferenced occurrence records, according to a new report published in the journal NeoBiota.

The platform grew out of an earlier, narrower effort. It was conceived as one objective of a larger project run by the Brazilian Institute for Biodiversity (BrBio) and the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), which set out to transform the National Database of Records and Management of Sun Coral—created by the Sun Coral Project in 2013—into an online portal. That original database covered only two coral species, Tubastraea coccinea and T. tagusensis. Recognizing that the existing structure could support far more, and drawing on a recent review of Brazil’s non-native marine species list prepared by researcher Larissa Pires-Teixeira, the team expanded the scope to encompass all non-native and cryptogenic marine and estuarine species in the country.

Every species in the database is assigned a status category following criteria established by Lopes and colleagues in 2009. Native species occur in their area of evolutionary or historical origin; non-native species occur outside that range as a result of human activity; and cryptogenic species have origins so poorly described that they cannot be confidently assigned to either group. Non-native species are further classified as confined, meaning they occur only in controlled artificial environments; detected, meaning recorded in nature without subsequent increase in abundance or spread; established, meaning recurrently detected with a complete life cycle and signs of population growth but no apparent impacts; or invasive, meaning their abundance or expansion interferes with other species or causes measurable socioeconomic or human health impacts. Of the 339 species now listed, 151 are cryptogenic, 13 confined, 62 detected, 87 established and 26 invasive.

The species span the major components of marine life. The platform includes seven phytoplankton species, among them the invasive diatom Coscinodiscus wailesii and the invasive dinoflagellates Alexandrium tamarense and Gymnodinium catenatum. Seventeen zooplankton species, twenty-one phytobenthos species—including the invasive alga Caulerpa scalpelliformis—and nineteen nektonic species, including the invasive lionfish Pterois volitans, are also listed. The largest group is the zoobenthos, with 275 species, of which 139 are cryptogenic, two confined, 44 detected, 69 established and 21 invasive. Species names are checked against the World Register of Marine Species to ensure alignment with the latest taxonomic revisions, and consultations are repeated whenever a publication changes the name of a species already in the system.

Building the database is a meticulous, multi-step process. The team begins with a preliminary species list drawn from earlier compilations, then selects a taxonomic group—usually a phylum or class—and searches the scientific literature, including doctoral theses, master’s dissertations, technical reports and books, mainly through Google Scholar using keyword combinations in English and Portuguese. Studies are filtered to include only those reporting species occurrences in marine and estuarine environments in Brazil. For each species, the team records the year of first record in the country, its status, and then extracts data for each individual occurrence: geographic coordinates, record date, record type, environment, habitat and source of information. Only georeferenced records are included, and when a study provides only a locality name or visibly incorrect coordinates, the team estimates positions using Google Earth, sometimes contacting authors or collection curators directly to fill gaps. Records are then reviewed by postdoctoral researchers before being uploaded.

The platform deliberately goes beyond traditional presence records. Each record is linked to a species, a record type—such as presence, absence, research, monitoring or environmental education—a specific date, a pair of coordinates and an environment classified as artificial, natural or urban. Absence records, though unusual in such databases, are considered valuable because they provide baselines that can support inferences about when a species was introduced, whether native communities show biological resistance, or whether eradication strategies have succeeded. Users can search by species or by record, applying filters for status, organism type, environment, date and habitat, with results displayed as clickable points on a map built on the Google Maps Application Programming Interface. An online form allows anyone to submit comments, suggestions and new records, which are validated before inclusion.

The effort has already produced a substantial body of data. Beyond the 6,191 records currently online—5,543 of them for zoobenthic species, dominated by 4,823 records of the two sun coral species—the team reports having compiled more than 10,000 records in total. More than 7,000 additional records covering dozens of species are under review awaiting upload, including 2,404 ascidian records from 42 species, 1,398 anthozoan records from 16 species, 899 hydrozoan records from 23 species, 710 polychaete records from 17 species and 866 non-decapod crustacean records from 23 species. The researchers emphasize that the database remains in an active phase of collection, review and species-by-species inclusion, and that some groups, such as sponges, macroalgae and the remaining microalgae, are still being compiled or refined.

Usage data suggest the portal is reaching both specialist and general audiences. According to Google Analytics figures from April 2024 to April 2025, the site attracted 1,224 users—almost all of them new—who generated nearly 2,000 sessions with a mean duration of approximately 3.5 minutes. Most users were Brazilian, with 813 from the country, concentrated in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Bahia, Paraná, Ceará, Rio Grande do Sul, Minas Gerais and Santa Catarina, but visitors also came from the United States, France, China, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Since 2019, ten undergraduate students from biology and oceanography programs at UERJ have interned with the platform, and the project has involved collaboration among professionals in biological sciences, information technology and design.

The platform’s managers see it as a tool for management as much as for science. By making records searchable and free, they argue, the portal helps local, regional and national environmental managers track changes in the occurrence and distribution of non-native species and plan strategies to prevent new introductions and control established ones. External contributions come mainly from divers and researchers, but environmental consultants have also begun submitting data under a requirement tied to the Invasive Alien Species Prevention and Control Project established by the Brazilian environmental agency IBAMA, which obliges companies monitoring areas influenced by potentially polluting oil and gas operations to submit non-native species records to publicly accessible platforms. Some specific management projects now use the platform’s online form as a third-party mechanism for receiving information.

Sustaining the effort remains the central challenge. The team notes that classifying species status is often difficult, with conflicting studies and complex biogeographic cases—such as the so-called Amazon barrier, which complicates distinguishing native ranges from introductions in Caribbean–Brazil distributions. Vagrant nektonic species that swim far beyond their normal ranges add further ambiguity, prompting the team to invite taxonomic specialists to validate status classifications. Funding for dedicated staff has been hard to secure, with much of the work carried out by academic researchers not specifically paid for the platform, supported by scholarships and project funds. Looking ahead, the team plans to complete record searches for remaining taxonomic groups, submit species statuses for expert validation, expand outreach through audiovisual materials and social media, and explore integration with other national and international databases, including regional efforts along the southwest Atlantic. With an estimated two to eight new marine non-native species recorded in Brazil each year, the researchers stress that constant updating will be essential to keep the platform reliable.

Subject of Research: A Brazilian online platform compiling georeferenced records of marine and estuarine non-native species

Article Title: The Brazilian Biological Invasion Platform: six years of lessons learned reporting non-native marine species

Article References: Casares, F. A., de Melo, V. R., Loureiro, M., Pires-Teixeira, L. M., Oigman-Pszczol, S. S., Pszczol, E., & Creed, J. C. (2025). The Brazilian Biological Invasion Platform: six years of lessons learned reporting non-native marine species. NeoBiota, 103, 231-248. https://doi.org/10.3897/neobiota.103.157105

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/neobiota.103.157105

Keywords: biological invasions, marine species, Brazil, non-native species, cryptogenic species, biodiversity database, sun coral, georeferenced records, science outreach, environmental management, taxonomy, NeoBiota