Ancient globetrotters-connectivity and putative native ranges of two cosmopolitan biofouling amphipods

Jan Beermann; Allison K Hall-Mullen; Charlotte Havermans; Joop Wp Coolen; Richard Pma Crooijmans; Bert Dibbits; Christoph Held; Andrea Desiderato

doi:10.7717/peerj.9613

Ancient globetrotters-connectivity and putative native ranges of two cosmopolitan biofouling amphipods

PeerJ. 2020 Jul 28:8:e9613. doi: 10.7717/peerj.9613. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Jan Beermann^{1

2

3}, Allison K Hall-Mullen^{1

3}, Charlotte Havermans^{1

4}, Joop Wp Coolen^{5

6}, Richard Pma Crooijmans⁷, Bert Dibbits⁷, Christoph Held¹, Andrea Desiderato^{1

8}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Functional Ecology, Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany.
² Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity, Oldenburg, Germany.
³ FB2, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany.
⁴ Helmholtz Young Investigator Group "Arctic Jellies", Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany.
⁵ Wageningen Marine Research, Den Helder, The Netherlands.
⁶ Chair group Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality Management, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
⁷ Animal Breeding and Genomics, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
⁸ Programa de Pós-Graduação em Zoologia (PPGZOO), Departamento de Zoologia, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil.

Abstract

The geographic distributions of some coastal marine species have appeared as cosmopolitan ever since they were first scientifically documented. In particular, for many benthic species that are associated with anthropogenic substrata, there is much speculation as to whether or not their broad distributions can be explained by natural mechanisms of dispersal. Here, we focused on two congeneric coastal crustaceans with cosmopolitan distributions-the tube-dwelling amphipods Jassa marmorata and Jassa slatteryi. Both species are common elements of marine biofouling on nearly all kinds of artificial hard substrata in temperate to warm seas. We hypothesized that the two species' modern occurrences across the oceans are the result of human shipping activities that started centuries ago. Mitochondrial DNA sequences of the CO1 fragment of specimens from distinct marine regions around the world were analysed, evaluating genetic structure and migration models and making inferences on putative native ranges of the two Jassa species. Populations of both species exhibited considerable genetic diversity with differing levels of geographic structure. For both species, at least two dominant haplotypes were shared among several geographic populations. Rapid demographic expansion and high migration rates between geographically distant regions support a scenario of ongoing dispersal all over the world. Our findings indicate that the likely former native range of J. marmorata is the Northwest Atlantic, whereas the likely former native range of J. slatteryi is the Northern Pacific region. As corroborated by the genetic connectivity between populations, shipping still appears to be the more successful vector of the two species' dispersal when compared to natural mechanisms. Historical invasion events that likely started centuries ago, along with current ongoing dispersal, confirm these species' identities as true "neocosmopolitans".

Keywords: Amphipoda; Biofouling; Biological invasion; Cosmopolitan distribution; Marine dispersal; Marine shipping.

Grants and funding

Charlotte Havermans was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Science Foundation) with the projects HA7627/1-1 and HA7627/1-2 within the Priority Programme 1158 on Antarctic Research with Comparable Investigations in Arctic Sea Ice. Joop Coolen, Richard Crooijmans and Bert Dibbits were funded by the NWO Domain Applied and Engineering Sciences under Grant 14494 and by the UK oil and gas project RECON (INSITE Foundation Phase I). Andrea Desiderato was funded by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (CNPq) through a PhD grant (process no. 141565/2017-9) and by a research grant of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD, German Academic Exchange Service). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.