Interesting/Little Known introduced populations

Seal salamander in Arkansas :

http://www.asihcopeiaonline.org/doi/abs/10.1643/CH-17-579

 

Russian ratsnake in the Netherlands :

https://www.researchgate.net/public...at_snake_elaphe_schrenckii_in_the_netherlands

 

The Japanese beetle Popillia japonica is a real invasive species which was first found outside Japan in 1916 in the USA were it is now found in a number of places.
1970 it was found on one of the Azore-islands ( Terceira ) and can now be found on almost every island of the Azores.
2014 a population was found in Northern Italy and 2017 already in Switzerland ( ).

 

I see them everywhere. They eat plants out of you garden and fly into swimming pools like crazy. They are very annoying.

 

Japanese beetles are certainly not a case of a "little known" introduced population. Maybe more little known are the California king snake (Lampropeltis getula californiae) and Caribbean bark scorpion (Centruroides gracilis) both trhiving in Teneriffe, Canary Islands.

 

I know a number of Reeves' muntjac deer have settled in central England. Most were escapees, and deliberate releases, from Woburn Safari Park in the 20th Century.

 

Introduction of a threatened lizard-population on a new site in Brazil :

http://www.scielo.br/pdf/rbzool/v25n4/09.pdf

 

Here's an interesting example, partly because it is not entirely certain (to my knowledge, I am unable to access to full article) whether this is an introduced population or a natural dispersal.

Multiple whitetip reef sharks, a species known to be native in the Indo-Pacific, have been found around a sunken ferry off the Parana coast in South-Eastern Brazil.

Human introduction or natural dispersion? Atlantic Ocean occurrence of the Indo‐Pacific whitetip reef shark Triaenodon obesus

 

It wasn't a Safari Park in those days.

 

No , it was 'Woburn Abbey'....

 

They initially tried Indian Muntjac, which proved danderous to small dogs, and were replaced by the Chinese species.

 

Masked palm civets have established themselves in Japan since at least the 1940's, although records of what might be civets date back to the 19th century. There was a lot of doubt for a while over whether or not they were native, but it seems like at least during WWII several were imported from Taiwan for fur and possibly food. Ever since, they've become even more common than foxes and tanuki in some areas.

http://wildmic.npust.edu.tw/ezfiles...mcivetPagumalarvata(Viverridae,Carnivora).pdf

Raccoons are still thriving there, as well. There was a brief craze of importing them as pets around the 70's due in part to a popular anime. Raccoons being raccoons, of course, they've made themselves at home easily. (Funnily enough, whenever you see a tanuki/raccoon dog in an English translation of an anime or Japanese game they will invariably be misidentified as just "raccoons".)

 

Common waxbill has some feral populations in Europe ( quite well known I guess ) but also in Brazil ( less well-known I guess ).

 

Guppy's on Fernando de Noronha archipelago, still not clear if it's an introduced or natural population :

Poecilia vivipara Bloch & Schneider, 1801 (Cyprinodontiformes, Poeciliidae), a guppy in an oceanic archipelago: from where did it come?

 

Apparently, there are Brush-Tailed Rock Wallabies on Oahu. How weird is that?

 

Feral Domestic Rabbits in Anchorage and Valdez Alaska.

 

I am amazed nobody mentioned the biggest introduced species I am aware of:
Hippopotamus in Colombia.
It started with 4 escaped hippos that were left over after te private zoo of the famous drugdealer Pablo Escobar was taken over by the government after Escobar was killer in a special forces operation. Now there seems to be over 40 of them living in some lakes and rivers in Colombia.

 

Where is the last place you would expect to see an aquatic African frog?

Tucson, Arizona.

Apparently there is a small introduced population of African Clawed Frogs there.

 

Lots of Hawaiian invaders
Invasive Species Profiles

 

Chestnut-fronted Macaw and Nile Crocodile in Florida.