Slow, but steady: dispersal of freshwater molluscs

By H. Kappes, P. Haase. Aquatic Sciences, 2011

252 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Molluscs are the proverbial examples of slow movement. In this review, dispersal distances and speed were assessed from literature data. Active upstream movement can occur both individually and in groups; and depends on traits such as size, sex and reproductive status, and on external factors such as flow velocity, temperature, sediment structure, and food availability. The potential for active dispersal follows the sequence Pulmonata ≥ Prosobranchia > Bivalvia, although data for Pulmonata originated from short-term experiments that likely overestimated dispersal capabilities. Active upstream movement may be 0.3 to 1.0 km per year for most snails and is probably well below 0.1 km per year for bivalves. Natural passive upstream dispersal increases the range 10-fold (snails) to 100-fold (bivalves), and anthropogenic vectors can increase upstream dispersal more than 100-fold (snails) to 1000-fold (bivalves). Three km seems to be the maximal within-stream distance at which many species display regular population mixing, and at which re-colonisation or successful restoration can be expected within 3–10 years. Lateral dispersal between unconnected water bodies is passive and mostly known from observational reports, but potential distances depend on vectors, climate and geomorphology. In general, active dispersal seems insufficient to furnish a compensatory mechanism, e.g., for the rate of projected climate change. We provide an overview on dispersal strategies in the light of applied issues. More rigorous field surveys and an integration of different approaches (such as mark-recapture, genetic) to quantify distances and probabilities of lateral dispersal are needed to predict species distributions across space and time.

Subfields: Ecology, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4bf388a76fefbec3ec6c910f8308bf463faa0b7d

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In Ecology

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

Citations in the corpus

Gut travellers: internal dispersal of aquatic organisms by waterfowl (2012, background): “…water flows limited to river channels or flood occurrence (Jacquemyn et al., 2010; Pollux, 2011), irregular anthropogenic activities (Wichmann et al., 2009; Waterkeyn et al., 2010; Kappes & Haase, 2011) or slower, less abundant non-avian animals (Bilton et al., 2001; Vanschoenwinkel et al., 2008).”
The history of an invasion: phases of the explosive spread of the physid snail Physella acuta through Europe, Transcaucasia and Central Asia (2017, unknown): “A wide range of possible agents for dispersal of snails has been discussed in the literature, including storm winds, other animals and human activities (Valvoglyi 1975; Kappes and Haase 2012; van Leeuwen et al. 2012; Banha et al. 2014; O _ zgo et al. 2016).”
Europe's freshwater biodiversity under climate change: distribution shifts and conservation needs (2014, background): “Molluscs, noted for their limited dispersal (0.1–1.0 km year 1; Kappes & Haase, 2012), are predicted to be the most at risk group.”
Biogeochemical hotspots: temporal and spatial scaling of the impact of freshwater mussels on ecosystem function (2015, unknown): “Adult mussels are highly sedentary; they rarely move further than a few metres laterally per year (Kappes & Haase, 2012) and less than a half metre in a week (Allen & Vaughn, 2009), so these aggregations are usually stable at the ecological time scale of stream food webs and ecosystem function.”