Cryptic invasive species are particularly problematic to study, manage, and control because of the difficulty detecting these species within their invaded habitats. Such is the case of the Asian Swamp Eel (Monopterus albus; ASE) where it is established in vegetated marshes along the Chattahoochee River, Georgia. Adult eels have been nearly impossible to detect or quantify with traditional sampling, although leaf-litter trapping of juvenile ASEs has been somewhat successful. In this study, we leveraged a collection of juveniles from the 2015 cohort and used single-nucleotide polymorphisms to reconstruct sibship among these juveniles in COLONY. Sibship reconstruction allowed us to learn about adult breeding behaviors and provided the first quantified estimates of breeder abundance. Pedigree reconstruction revealed that adults of both sexes were polygamous and likely traveled up to 0.5 km among marsh habitats during a single breeding season. Estimates of the number of breeding adults contributing to offspring (N_s) and the effective number of breeders (N_b) indicated an approximate minimum bound of 100 breeding adults in the marshes in 2015. Our study updated the invasion status of a cryptic population formerly riddled with uncertainty, highlighting that low captures of adult eels in the study area have been the result of low detectability, not low abundance. Given that low detectability would likely hinder removal efforts, our results suggest that future efforts could focus on suppression of ASE abundance when they are most vulnerable to capture and containing the spatial extent of the invasion.

隐性入侵物种特别难以研究，管理和控制，因为很难在其入侵的栖息地中检测到这些物种。亚洲沼泽鳗（Monopterus albus）就是这种情况。; ASE）位于佐治亚州查塔胡奇河沿岸的植被沼泽中。尽管诱捕幼体ASE非常成功，但用传统采样法几乎不可能检测或定量成年鳗。在这项研究中，我们利用了2015年队列中的一组少年，并使用单核苷酸多态性在COLONY中重建了这些少年之间的同胞关系。同胞关系的重建使我们能够了解成年繁殖行为，并提供了对繁殖者数量的第一个量化估计。家谱重建显示，成年男女都是一夫多妻制，在单个繁殖季节可能会在沼泽生境中游走达0.5公里。估计产生后代的成年成年个体数量（N _s）和育种者的有效数量（N _b）表示2015年沼泽地中有100个成年成年雌虾的最小界限。我们的研究更新了以前充满不确定性的神秘种群的入侵状况，突显了成年鳗鱼的低捕获量。研究区域是可检测性低而不是低丰度的结果。鉴于低可检测性可能会阻碍清除工作，因此我们的结果表明，当最容易捕获和控制入侵的空间范围时，未来的工作可能会集中在抑制ASE丰度上。