Abstract
Over recent decades, the neophyte Fucus evanescens has extended eastwards along the salinity gradient within the Baltic Sea, indicating gradual adaptation to low salinity conditions. To find out whether F. evanescens can migrate further into the Baltic Sea and potentially become a competitor to the native F. vesiculosus, the acclimation potentials of different F. evanescens and F. vesiculosus populations were investigated with respect to habitat salinity. For both species, pigmentation, water content, and photosynthetic rate were measured under laboratory and field conditions. The instantaneous measurement data and incubation experiment did not show clear differences in the measured photosynthetic parameters between different salinity levels (6–20), or between species. Maximum likelihood phylogenetic analyses of the nuclear marker PDI (a putative protein disulfide isomerase) separated F. vesiculosus and F. evanescens into well-defined groups supporting the hypothesis that the two very similar species do not represent different morphotypes of the same species/gene pool. These findings indicate that – at least for the vegetative stage of F. evanescens – salinity may not be a limiting factor for a further spread into the Baltic Sea.
Funding source: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Award Identifier / Grant number: GRK 2000
Funding source: European Regional Development Fund
Award Identifier / Grant number: ERDF, UHRO26
Funding statement: This study was conducted within the framework of the Research Training Group “Baltic TRANSCOAST” funded by the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) under Grant Number GRK 2000, Funder Id: 10.13039/501100001659, (www.baltic-transcoast.uni-rostock.de), Funder Name: European Regional Development Fund, Funder Id: 10.13039/501100008530, Grant Number: ERDF, UHRO26. This is Baltic TRANSCOAST publication no. GRK2000/0018. Galina Zhigadlova is gratefully acknowledged for collecting and providing F. evanescens samples from Kamchatka and Sakhalin Island. We would also like to thank Claudia Lott and Ralf Bastrop for their assistance with DNA sequencing and Prof. Dr. Inna Sokolova and Susanne Thümecke for critical reading and language corrections. We are also grateful for the feedback of our two anonymous reviewers which improved the manuscript.
About the authors
Katharina Romoth is a marine biologist and scientific diver at the University of Rostock, Germany. Her research interest is benthos ecology with focus on the biodiversity and ecophysiology of macrophytes.
Petra Nowak is a marine biologist specializing in the biodiversity and evolution of macroalgae at the University of Rostock, Germany. Beside the taxonomical aspect, she is focused on the molecular and the morphological approaches toward understanding the acclimation and adaptation processes.
Daniela Kempke graduated with an MSc in Marine Biology from the University of Rostock, Germany. During her studies, she performed research on the salinity tolerance of the brown algae. Presently she is working at the institute biota – Institute of Ecological Research and Planning Ltd., Germany.
Anna Dietrich is a taxonomist with focus on the polychaete fauna as well as seaweeds in the German waters of the North and Baltic Sea at the “Institut für Angewandte Ökosystemforschung GmbH” in Neu Broderstorf, Germany. Her fields of interest are also non-indigenous species of seaweeds and their distribution in the Baltic Sea.
Christian Porsche is a biologist specialized in aquatic ecology, working at the Institute of Biosciences at the University of Rostock, Germany. He has focused on research fields including ecophysiology of higher plants, ecosystem modelling as well as design and statistical analysis of experiments for over 10 years.
Hendrik Schubert is Professor in Aquatic Ecology at the University of Rostock, Germany. His research interest is brackish water ecology with focus on the ecophysiology of autotrophs. Since 1998 he is also working on the biogeography of aquatic macrophytes, exploiting their potential for bioindication of the ecological status of aquatic ecosystems. He has taught aquatic ecology at the Universities of Greifswald and Rostock for about 20 years.
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The online version of this article offers supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/bot-2018-0098).
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