Paleogenetic evidence for a past invasion of Onondaga Lake, New York, by exotic Daphnia curvirostris using mtDNA from dormant eggs

Abstract

Cladocerans possess traits such as resistant diapausing eggs and rapid parthenogenetic reproduction that make them efficient invaders of new habitats. Nearly all known invasions have been successful, perhaps because failed invasions are difficult to detect. It is possible, however, to identify past failed invasions, by studying the diapausing egg bank. Daphnia ephippia were found in the sediments of Onondaga Lake, New York that could neither be hatched nor identified using egg‐case morphology. Instead, we used sequences of the 12S ribosomal ribonucleic acid (rRNA) gene of mitochondrial deoxyribonucleic acid (mtDNA) extracted from diapausing eggs to identify the unknown Daphnia. We compared these DNA sequences with those generated from morphologically identified Daphnia species collected in Onondaga Lake, and with published sequences for other North American Daphnia species. The invader was identified as Daphnia curvirostris, a Eurasian species that has been only reported once before from North America, in extreme northwestern Canada. The discovery of it in Onondaga Lake signifies a greater than 4,500‐km range extension for this species. On the basis of the sediment ephippial data, D. curvirostris first appeared in the lake about 1952, reached maximum abundance during the period of peak pollution (1950s–1980s), and then essentially disappeared after 1983 when lake water quality improved. As with the finding of another exotic cladoceran, D. exilis, in Onondaga Lake (Hairston et al. 1999a), it is likely that chemical industry activities on the lakeshores were the original source of invading D. curvirostris, that pollution allowed this species to become established in the lake, and that the reduction in pollution ultimately led to its disappearance from the water column.

High-resolution paleolimnology opens new management perspectives for lakes adaptation to climate warming

“…In these deep and large U-shaped lakes, the cladoceran remains production, sedimentation, and taphonomic processes within the water column do not alter the compositional fidelity of remain assemblages, which accordingly mirror the composition of parental populations in the water column (Alric and Perga, 2011). In contrast, although egg banks do not necessarily always reflect the extant pelagic population over a short-term scale (Jankowski and Straile, 2003;Keller and Spaak, 2004), they provide a useful archive to investigate the taxonomic (e.g., Weider et al, 1997;Duffy et al, 2000) and evolutionary changes over long-term (e.g., Hairston et al, 1999;Frisch et al, 2014). For cyclical parthenogenetic taxa, the production of resting eggs occurred during an environmentally induced sexual reproduction (Hebert, 1980).…”

Anthropogenic eutrophication shapes the past and present taxonomic composition of hybridizing Daphnia in unproductive lakes

“…Because ephippia and other cladoceran remains sink to the lake bottom, sediment cores are a useful source of information for the investigation of past Daphnia populations (Korhola and Rautio 2001). Since the diapausing eggs can stay viable for several decades or longer, genetic analysis of the egg banks can be performed either on the hatchlings (Weider et al 1997;Hairston et al 1999;Jankowski and Straile 2003) or directly on the diapausing eggs (Duffy et al 2000;Brede et al 2009). Moreover, ephippia are important for dispersal and colonization of Daphnia into new habitats (Havel and Shurin 2004).…”

First record of the temperate species Daphnia curvirostris Eylmann, 1887 emend. Johnson, 1952 (Cladocera: Daphniidae) in Mexico and its demographic characteristics in relation to algal food density

“…Although it was found in the relatively deep (17-19 m) Onondaga Lake, New York, USA (Duffy et al 2000), it was found in shallow water bodies, wetlands and pools in Japan and Spain (Tanaka and Tominaga 1986;Angeler 2005). In Mexico, we also collected this species from a vast but shallow wetland with a depth of \2 m. On the other hand, the Japanese populations were found in dystrophic acidic waters (Tanaka and Tominaga 1986).…”

“…On the other hand, vertebrate predation pressure may be low due to the prevalent conditions of large quantities of decomposing organic matter, probably resulting in occasional low oxygen levels and/or the presence of a large bird population that feeds on fish. Reduced fish predation pressure has been predicted to be one of the causes of the establishment of Daphnia curvirostris populations in Onondaga Lake in New York (Duffy et al 2000). The relative susceptibilities of D. curvirostris and other coexisting cladocerans to vertebrate and invertebrate predation pressure need to be studied in more detail, and this would help to generalize the relative competitive abilities of different cladoceran species in Chimaliapan.…”