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

ABSTRACT: 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 ~25 years. Subfossi

SUBMITTER: Albano PG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5959955 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature