INVASOMICS · Adaptive plasticity as a key for invasion success in disturbed ecosystems
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-10-01 → 2024-09-30
- EU contribution
- €246,669
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Adaptive plasticity as a key for invasion success in disturbed ecosystems
Invasive species are a major constituent of global change, threaten local biodiversity and cause serious economic damage. The science of biological invasions has tried to discern what factors determine the success of invasive populations, be it the species-specific intrinsic features or environmental factors, e.g. eutrophication. However, the outcomes are highly context-dependent. Moreover, the process of invasion often induces an initial reduction in population size associated with a reduction in genetic variation due to genetic drift. This reduction seems to not affect the invasive success of some established introduced populations, constituting a genetic paradox of biological invasions. Three key questions related to evolutionary biology stand out in the study of biological invasions: i) Is the variable, environmentally-induced expression of life-history traits a key to invasion success? ii) How do genetics and biology of invasive species differ in their native vs. introduced areas? iii) Is environmental tolerance greater in invasive species and populations? In this project the invasive eastern mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki), whose invasion history is well known, is used as experimental model to characterize its tolerance to nitrogen pollution and identify mechanistic differences in its response between the native and invasive populations. Early warning molecular tools such as transcriptomics, but also whole organism responses like respiratory rates and life history traits are used to denote the health status of the experimentally exposed individuals to nitrogen pollution. This approach is then applied in three sympatric amphipod species in the Main river catchment. The overall objective is to understand the adaptive mechanisms that promote invasion success in a widespread invasive freshwater species.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Invasive species are a major constituent of global change, threaten local biodiversity, ecosystem services, and cause serious economic damage. Invasion science has tried to discern the factors that determine whether a non-native population will become invasive or not. Invasive populations are usually depleted in genetic diversity, creating the so-called 'invasion paradox' because traditional perspectives consider high genetic variation to be crucial for rapid adaptation to novel environments. Recent theoretical advances trying to solve this paradox propose that contemporary pre-adaptation to human-altered habitats within the native range or during the transport stage in the introduction can promote invasions. If this is true, introduced populations will exhibit increased adaptive tolerance to a stressor associated with transport, e.g. eutrophication, contributing to their success in the recipient environment. The aim of this project is to understand adaptive mechanisms that promote invasion success in widespread invasive freshwater vertebrate and invertebrate species. I will study the phenotypic differentiation of wild populations of the eastern mosquitofish in an eutrophication gradient, complemented with laboratory ecotoxicology experiments, both in the native (Florida) and invasive (Spain) ranges of the model species. This intraspecific comparison will be supported by the interspecific study of 3 sympatric freshwater amphipod species in Germany to assess potential competitive shifts in the invasive ones stemming from higher tolerances to eutrophication. Including natural populations with such particularly well described invasion histories will show why some populations become invaders and others do not. Current developments in molecular genetics , e.g. ‘-omics’, give an excellent precise tool to investigate the links between the disciplines of evolutionary biology, ecotoxicology, and invasions science and help elucidate the paradox.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE-UNIVERSITAET FRANKFURT AM MAIN · Frankfurt Am MainCoordinatorGermany
- UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA · GainesvilleUnited States
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union