Calum MacNeil,^1,*,** Pieter Boets,^2,*** Dirk Platvoet<sup>3,****

1</sup>1Department of Environment, Food and Agriculture, This Slieau Whallian, Foxdale Road, St. Johns IM4
²2Laboratory of Environmental Toxicology and Aquatic Ecology, Ghent University, J. Plateaustraat 22,
³3Netherlands Centre for Biodiversity/Naturalis Van Steenis building Einstanweg 2, 2333 CC Leiden, Th

^*Corresponding author
^**Calum MacNeil has worked on freshwater community ecology in Scotland, Northern Ireland, England, The Isle of Man, The Netherlands, Alaska and New Zealand. His PhD at Queen's University Belfast focussed on the impacts of freshwater shrimp invaders and this interest has stayed with him ever since. He worked on invasive Gammarus in N. Ireland and the ‘Killer Shrimp’ Dikerogammarus villous in the Netherlands. In a series of unsuccessful grant proposals, to the usual U.K. funding bodies several years ago, he warned of the imminent arrival of D. villosus to the U.K. and of the potential impacts of D. villosus on British fauna, while suggesting some mitigation measures and some useful ‘pre-emptive’ field, laboratory and mesocosm experiments in the U.K. and Central Europe. He hates to say he told you so…. He is currently the Freshwater biologist and Environmental Protection Officer (Water) for The Isle of Man Government. He is currently following the invasion and attempted ‘control’ of D. villosus in the British Isles with a great deal of interest.
^***Pieter Boets is a PhD student at the department of Applied Ecology, Laboratory of Toxicology and Environmental Biology at Ghent University, Belgium. His research interest is related to the impact and spread of alien macroinvertebrates in inland waters in Flanders (Belgium). Based on a combination of modeling techniques and laboratory experiments he tries to gain insight into the complex ecology of invasive species.
^****Dirk Platvoet (PhD, B.Sc.) is researcher at the Netherlands Centre for Biodiversity/Naturalis in Leiden. He has studied mainly freshwater amphipods during the past three decades and recently has become involved in studies of aquatic invaders of Western Europe.