Ask any US wildlife official how the invasive Asian carp have managed to stick around US rivers for four decades, and they'll all say different versions of the same three things. First, the carp is a voracious eater that outcompetes other species for plankton, causing native US fish to die and allowing the carp to thrive. Second, the carp reproduces with incredible ease, so its populations have grown at tremendous speed. And third, the US doesn't possess any native species of fish large enough to prey on adult Asian carp, so they have very few predators. But a closer look at the four Asian carp species currently plaguing America's waters points to one glaring fact: we clearly don't know much about these fish.
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