Historical ecology of a biological invasion: the interplay of eutrophication and pollution determines time lags in establishment and detection

Autor(en)
Paolo Giulio Albano, Ivo Gallmetzer, Alexandra Haselmair, Adam Tomasovych, Michael Stachowitsch, Martin Zuschin
Abstrakt

Human disturbance modifies selection regimes, depressing native species fitness and enabling the establishment of non-indigenous species with suitable traits. A major impediment to test the effect of disturbance on invasion success is the lack of long-term data on the history of invasions. Here, we overcome this problem and reconstruct the effect of disturbance on the invasion of the bivalve Anadara transversa from sediment cores in the Adriatic Sea. We show that (1) the onset of major eutrophication in the 1970s shifted communities towards species tolerating hypoxia, and (2) A. transversa was introduced in the 1970s but failed to reach reproductive size until the late 1990s because of metal contamination, resulting in an establishment and detection lag of similar to 25 years. Subfossil assemblages enabled us to (1) disentangle the distinct stages of invasion, (2) quantify time-lags and (3) finely reconstruct the interaction between environmental factors and the invasion process, showing that while disturbance does promote invasions, a synergism of multiple disturbances can shift selection regimes beyond tolerance limits and induce significant time lags in establishment. The quantification of these time lags enabled us to reject the hypothesis that aquaculture was an initial vector of introduction, making shipping the most probable source.

Organisation(en)
Institut für Paläontologie, Department für Funktionelle und Evolutionäre Ökologie
Externe Organisation(en)
Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAS)
Journal
Biological Invasions
Band
20
Seiten
1417-1430
Anzahl der Seiten
14
ISSN
1387-3547
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-017-1634-7
Publikationsdatum
06-2018
Peer-reviewed
Ja
ÖFOS 2012
105118 Paläontologie
Schlagwörter
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Ecology
Link zum Portal
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/b42e9c3b-b828-4d8e-a246-2079e2fc23e5