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Ponto-Caspian amphipod co-location with zebra mussel beds (Dreissena polymorpha) is influenced by substrate size and population source

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posted on 2024-04-12, 12:32 authored by Catherine H Sanders, Phil L. Buckley, Charlotte Devereux Hunt, Kate MathersKate Mathers, Daniel Mills

The global spread of non-native species is leading to an increasing frequency of multiple co-occurring non-native species. We examined the co-occurrence of the bivalve mollusc Dreissena polymorpha (zebra mussel) with three Ponto-Caspian amphipods (Dikerogammarus villosus, Dikerogammarus haemobaphes, and Chelicorophium curvispinum) across England and Wales in association with in-situ substrate size. For all three amphipod species, substrate grain size where amphipods co-occurred with D. polymorpha was significantly finer than when recorded in isolation. Subsequently, we confirmed this via aquarium experiments. We examined the occurrence of D. villosus with D. polymorpha when present with cobbles, gravel, or sand from three population sources (co-location with abundant D. polymorpha populations, co-location with low populations, and naïve). Experiments demonstrated that D. villosus actively sought shelter on or near D. polymorpha, with their co-location being significantly more prevalent in finer grained substrates (sand > gravel > cobble). The strength of this co-location differed by population source, with those co-located with high D. polymorpha densities demonstrating a greater association. Our analyses and experiments indicate that D. polymorpha may facilitate Ponto-Caspian amphipod establishment in otherwise suboptimal locations, whereby mussel shells provide favourable structural habitat for the amphipods, analogous to the presence of coarse-grained benthic sediment. 

History

School

  • Social Sciences and Humanities

Department

  • Geography and Environment

Published in

Hydrobiologia

Publisher

Springer

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Rights holder

© The Author(s)

Publisher statement

This Open Access article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Acceptance date

2024-02-29

Publication date

2024-04-10

Copyright date

2024

ISSN

0018-8158

eISSN

1573-5117

Language

  • en

Depositor

Dr Kate Mathers. Deposit date: 10 April 2024

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