abundance

PIE LTER, parasites of the fiddler crab, Minuca pugnax, on east coast salt marshes of the USA.

Abstract: 

When a species colonizes a new range, it can escape enemies found in its original range. Examples of enemy escape abound for invasive species, but are rare for climate migrants, which are populations of a species that colonize a new range due to climate-driven range shifts or expansions. The fiddler crab Minuca (=Uca) pugnax is found in the intertidal salt marshes of the US east coast. It recently expanded its range north into the Gulf of Maine as a result of ocean warming. We tested the hypothesis that M. pugnax had escaped its parasite enemies. Parasite richness and trematode intensity were lower in populations in the expanded range than in populations in the historical range, but infection prevalence did not differ. Although M. pugnax escaped most of its historical parasites when it migrated northward, it was infected with black-gill lamellae (indicative of Synophrya hypertrophica), which was found in the historical range, and with the trematode Odhneria cf. odhneri, which was not found in the historical range. To our knowledge, this is the first time that O. cf. odhneri has been reported in fiddler crabs. These results demonstrate that although M. pugnax escaped some of its historical parasites when it expanded its range, it appears to have gained a new parasite (O. cf. odhneri) in the expanded range. Overall, our results demonstrate that climate migrants can escape their enemies despite colonizing habitats adjacent to their enemy-filled historical range.

See Johnson et al. 2020. A climate migrant escapes its parasites. Marine Ecology Progress Series 641: 111-121 for more details.

Core Areas: 

Data set ID: 

564

Keywords: 

Short name: 

HTL-MAR-Parasite-FidCrab

Data sources: 

HTL-MAR-Parasite-FidCrab.csv
HTL-MAR-Parasite-FidCrab.xls

Methods: 

To test the hypothesis that fiddler crabs in the expanded range escaped their historic parasites, we sampled 5 marshes in the expanded range and 5 in the historic range (n=~50/marsh). The latitude and longitude of each site is listed in the data file.  Crabs were collected haphazardly by hand from each site. Crabs were sexed, noted for injuries, measured for size, and dissected live for parasites, which were identified to species when possible and counted per crab for metazoan parasites. Only presence/absence of non-metazoan parasites was noted.

 

Locations of marshes sampled included:
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Rowley, Massachusetts
Beverly, Massachusetts
Weymouth, Massachusetts
Scituate, Massachusetts
Falmouth, Massachusetts
Noank, Connecticut
Little Egg Township, New Jersey
Cape Charles, Virginia
Sapelo Island, Georgia

Maintenance: 

On going collections.

Version 01: October 6, 2021, data and metadata updates to comply with importation to DEIMS7 and LTER Data Portal. Used MarcrosExportEML_HTML (working)pie_excel2007_Jul2021 7/26/21 9:04 AM for QA/QC to EML 2.1.0.

 

 

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