Dr Tatenda Dalu is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Biology and Environmental Sciences and Leader of the Aquatic Systems Research Group at University of Mpumalanga, Honorary Research Associate at the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity, and a member of the Alien Species Risk Assessment Review Panel of South Africa and British Ecological Society Grants Committee. He is a United Nations Global Environment Outlook 7 Contributing Author, Associate Editor for Aquatic Invasions, African Journal of Ecology, BioInvasions Records, Ecology and Evolution and Frontiers in Water – Environmental Water Quality, and Editorial Board Member for Science of the Total Environment and Environmental Advances. He has Guest Edited for Frontiers in Water and Frontiers in Environmental Science. He is an expert in freshwater riverine, wetland and reservoir ecosystems mainly using phytoplankton, invertebrates, and fish as study organisms. He has previously co-edited two books for Elsevier on Fundamentals of Tropical Freshwater Wetlands: From Ecology to Conservation Management and Emerging Freshwater Pollutants: Analysis, Fate, and Regulation. Working with fellow research colleagues, Dr Dalu has identified and described two new species in South Africa (Copepod Lovenula raynerae) and Zimbabwe (Fairy shrimp Streptocephalus sangoensis). Dr Frank Masese is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Science at University of Eldoret, Kenya, and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa. He is a Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow and a Member of the Editorial Boards of Freshwater Biology, International Review of Hydrobiology, PLoS ONE and PeerJ. He has Guest Edited for Hydrobiologia, Frontiers in Water and Frontiers in Environmental Science. His research interests lie mainly in biodiversity assessments, ecosystem ecology and aqueous biogeochemistry, with a focus on riverine ecosystems. His studies straddle the terrestrial-aquatic domain, where he seeks to understand how landscape variables and human activities shape aquatic ecosystem structure and functioning. Working with fellow researchers, Dr Masese is in the final stages of developing a biological criterion for monitoring surface waters in Kenya.