Invasion of Eurytemora sibling species (Copepoda: Temoridae) from north America into the Baltic Sea and European Atlantic coast estuaries

Abstract

The Baltic Sea is one of the world's most intensive centres for maritime traffic. This sea has become an important recipient of alien species transported with ballast water from all over the world. Sibling species are a special group of invasive animals that are hardly distinguishable from relative but often ecologically different local species. In this study, a molecular genetic diagnosis was performed, based on the analysis of DNA nucleotide sequences (barcoding) in the populations of a dominant circumpolar species Eurytemora affinis (Poppe, 1880) from the Gulf of Finland and the Atlantic coast of European estuaries and of Eurytemora carolleeae Alekseev and Souissi, 2011, a new North American suspected invasive form. The results of the diagnosis were completed by morphological analyses. Considering the key role of E. affinis in the Baltic Sea zooplankton community, the invasion of E. carolleeae might have consequences for biodiversity, biogeography, conservation and ecosystem management in this area.

Keywords:

• invasion
• cryptic species
• copepod systematic
• phylogenetics
• morphometrics

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to all the collectors of material used in this study: S. Malyavin, Dr E. Naumenko and L. Samchishina. We thank all the staff of the molecular genetic systematic laboratory of ZIN RAS, where the molecular genetics part of this work was done. We also thank the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario, where part of sequencing for this study was carried out. We are also grateful to Prof. C.E. Lee (University of Wisconsin) for providing us with E. affinis sequences. The study was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (Russian Ukrainian Grant 10-04-90420-Укр_а, Russian–Taiwanese Grant 05_04_90588_NNS_a), the Program of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences “Biodiversity”, the Grant of the Saint-Petersburg Government for students and Ph. D. students and BIODISEINE Seine Aval project in France. Special thanks to the University of Lille 1 for offering an invited professor position to V. Alekseev during the study period.