Locomotor responses to salt stress in native and invasive mud-tidal gastropod populations (Batillaria)

Phuong Thao Ho, Hoa Quynh Nguyen, Elizabeth M.A. Kern, Yong Jin Won

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

Plasticity in salt tolerance can be crucial for successful biological invasions of novel habitats by marine gastropods. The intertidal snail Batillaria attramentaria, which is native to East Asia but invaded the western shores of North America from Japan 80 years ago, provides an opportunity to examine how environmental salinity may shape behavioral and morphological traits. In this study, we compared the movement distance of four B. attramentaria populations from native (Korea and Japan) and introduced (United States) habitats under various salinity levels (13, 23, 33, and 43 PSU) during 30 days of exposure in the lab. We sequenced a partial mitochondrial CO1 gene to infer phylogenetic relationships among populations and confirmed two divergent mitochondrial lineages constituting our sample sets. Using a statistical model-selection approach, we investigated the effects of geographic distribution and genetic composition on locomotor performance in response to salt stress. Snails exposed to acute low salinity (13 PSU) reduced their locomotion and were unable to perform at their normal level (the moving pace of snails exposed to 33 PSU). We did not detect any meaningful differences in locomotor response to salt stress between the two genetic lineages or between the native snails (Japan vs. Korea populations), but we found significant locomotor differences between the native and introduced groups (Japan or Korea vs. the United States). We suggest that the greater magnitude of tidal salinity fluctuation at the US location may have influenced locomotor responses to salt stress in introduced snails.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)458-470
Number of pages13
JournalEcology and Evolution
Volume11
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We thank our colleagues Soyeon Park, Sook‐Jin Jang, Lee Bitna, Won‐Kyung Lee, and Bokyoung Kim for their assistance in the field. Support was provided by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea and the Korean Government, Ministry of Science, Information and Communication Technology, and Future Planning of Korea (MSIP) (NFR‐2015R1A4A1041997) to Y‐J. W.

Funding Information:
We thank our colleagues Soyeon Park, Sook-Jin Jang, Lee Bitna, Won-Kyung Lee, and Bokyoung Kim for their assistance in the field. Support was provided by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea and the Korean Government, Ministry of Science, Information and Communication Technology, and Future Planning of Korea (MSIP) (NFR-2015R1A4A1041997) to Y-J. W.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Keywords

  • adaptive divergence
  • invasive species
  • locomotion
  • salinity
  • snail behavior

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