Genetic conspecificity of the worldwide populations of Didemnum vexillum Kott, 2002.

By A. Locke, M. Carman, L. Stefaniak, G. Lambert, A. Gittenberger, Huan Zhang, Senjie Lin, R. Whitlatch. 2009

150 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A colonial tunicate belonging to the genus Didemnum has recently been found in many temperate coastal regions throughout the world, as well as large areas of Georges Bank in the NW Atlantic. It continues to spread rapidly and compete aggressively with native, hard substrate species (e.g., mussels, barnacles, bryozoans, other ascidians). In addition, it can form dense mats on deepwater cobble-gravel substrates and influence the abundance and species composition of benthic epifauna and infauna. Thus, its ever-increasing presence is creating potentially severe detrimental economic and ecological impacts. This invasive species, referred to in recent publications as Didemnum sp. A, has been misidentified as five previously described species native to the regions where Didemnum sp. A has been discovered and has been described as two new species based solely on morphological characteristics. There are relatively few diagnostic characters and a great deal of variability in the relevant characters, making the task of identification very difficult. Adding to the confusion has been the widespread and apparently disjunct distribution of the species. Here, we present molecular data on both mitochondrial and nuclear genes from colonies sampled from Europe, east and west coasts of North America, Japan, and New Zealand. These data strongly indicate that Didemnum sp. A is a single species, possibly native to the northwestern Pacific Ocean, that has become established globally. Considering genetic and morphological evidence, the most appropriate name for this species is Didemnum vexillum Kott, 2002.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e69dd1d32f87790935a9e7f1cc21fb9562dae757

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Global and Planetary Change

In Oceanography

Citations in the corpus

Adventures of a sea squirt sleuth: unraveling the identity of Didemnum vexillum, a global ascidian invader (2009, background): “…the D. vestum holotype location and from numerous locations in the Pacific northwest during seasons when salinity is 30 ‰ or less due to heavy rainfall always have small sparse spicules, though DNA sequencing has shown that they are genetically the same species (Stefaniak et al. 2009 this issue).”
Ascidians as models for studying invasion success (2015, background): “Coupled with morphological evidence, D. vexillum seems to be the most appropriate name for this ascidian species (Lambert 2009; Stefaniak et al. 2009).”
Anthropogenic structures and the infiltration of natural benthos by invasive ascidians (2012, background): “Three of the species, B. violaceus, S. clava and D. vexillum are native to the Northwest Pacific (Cohen 2005; Stefaniak et al. 2009), whereas B. schlosseri is considered a native of European and Mediterranean coastlines (Cohen 2005).”