Competition and parasitism in the native White Clawed Crayfish Austropotamobius pallipes and the invasive Signal Crayfish Pacifastacus leniusculus in the UK
By J. C. Dunn, H. McClymont, Martin Christmas, Alison M. Dunn. Biological Invasions, 2009
91 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Many crayfish species have been introduced to novel habitats worldwide, often threatening extinction of native species. Here we investigate competitive interactions and parasite infections in the native Austropotamobius pallipes and the invasive Pacifastacus leniusculus from single and mixed species populations in the UK. We found A. pallipes individuals to be significantly smaller in mixed compared to single species populations; conversely P. leniusculus individuals were larger in mixed than in single species populations. Our data provide no support for reproductive interference as a mechanism of competitive displacement and instead suggest competitive exclusion of A. pallipes from refuges by P. leniusculus leading to differential predation. We screened 52 P. leniusculus and 12 A. pallipes for microsporidian infection using PCR. We present the first molecular confirmation of Thelohania contejeani in the native A. pallipes; in addition, we provide the first evidence for T. contejeani in the invasive P. leniusculus. Three novel parasite sequences were also isolated from P. leniusculus with an overall prevalence of microsporidian infection of 38% within this species; we discuss the identity of and the similarity between these three novel sequences. We also screened a subset of fifteen P. leniusculus and three A. pallipes for Aphanomyces astaci, the causative agent of crayfish plague and for the protistan crayfish parasite Psorospermium haeckeli. We found no evidence for infection by either agent in any of the crayfish screened. The high prevalence of microsporidian parasites and occurrence of shared T. contejeani infection lead us to propose that future studies should consider the impact of these parasites on native and invasive host fitness and their potential effects upon the dynamics of native-invader systems.
Subfields: Ecology, Insect Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7e4628def312d54d5cbee41f4ae5df8a912272e0
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In Ecology
Citations in the corpus
- Red swamp crayfish: biology, ecology and invasion - an overview (2015, background): “In Europe, P. clarkii was first introduced into the Iberian Peninsula, legally imported from Louisiana for commercial purposes in 1973, at two aquaculture installations in Seville and Badajoz (HabsburgoLorena, 1979).”
- Niche differentiation among invasive crayfish and their impacts on ecosystem structure and functioning (2014, background): “Invasive species of crayfish regularly out-compete and replace native crayfish (Hill and Lodge, 1999; Alonso and Martínez, 2006; Dunn et al., 2009; Haddaway et al., 2012) but interactions among invasive crayfish are rarely examined despite the increasing likelihood of them occurring in sympatry.”
- A review of the ever increasing threat to European crayfish from non-indigenous crayfish species (2009, background): “This species is prone to the effects of crayfish plague and in recent times there have been reports of introduced populations being affected, e.g. England (Environment Agency, 2007), Switzerland 11p8 Figure 2 L’écrevisse à pieds rouges, Astacus astacus (C. Lukhaup).”