An Indo-Pacific damselfish in the Gulf of Mexico: origin and mode of introduction
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biogeography, Marine Biology
- Keywords
- Invasive fish, Greater Caribbean, offshore petro-platform, dna barcode, coral-reef fish
- Copyright
- © 2017 Robertson et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2017. An Indo-Pacific damselfish in the Gulf of Mexico: origin and mode of introduction. PeerJ Preprints 5:e3404v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3404v1
Abstract
The Indo-west Pacific (IWP) coral-reef damselfish Neopomacentrus cyanomos is well established across the southwest Gulf of Mexico (SwGoMx). Comparisons of mtDNA sequences of the SwGoMx population with those from conspecifics from 16 sites scattered across its native range show that the SwGoMx population is derived from two of four native lineages: one from the north-west Pacific Ocean, the other from the northern Indian Ocean. Three hypotheses address how this species was introduced to the SwGoMX: (1) aquarium release; (2) borne by cargo-ship; and (3) carried by offshore petroleum platform (petro-platform). The first is unlikely because this species rarely features in the aquarium trade, and “N. cyanomos” traded to the USA from the sole IWP source we are aware of are a misidentified congener, N. taeniurus. The second hypothesis is unlikely because shipping has not been associated with the introduction of alien damselfishes, there is little international shipping between the IWP and the SwGoMx, and voyages between those areas would be lengthy and along environmentally unfavorable routes. Various lines of evidence support the third hypothesis: (i) bio-fouled petro-platforms represent artificial reefs that can sustain large and diverse populations of tropical reef-fishes, including N. cyanomos in the SwGoMx; (ii) relocation of such platforms has been implicated in trans-ocean introductions leading to establishment of non-native populations of such fishes; and (iii) genetic characteristics of the SwGoMx population indicate that it was established by a large and diverse group of founders drawn from the regions where many SwGoMx petro-platforms originated.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
Supplemental Information
Global shipping routes
Figure S1 - Global Shipping Routes (from Halpern et al. 2008. A Global Map of Human Impact on Marine Ecosystems.Science 319: 948, DOI: 10.1126/science.1149345, Figure S2, with permission from AAAS). Red routes are the most heavily travelled.
Sequence data not yet in Table S1
These are the two SAIAB sequences that have been submitted to Genbank, but for which we do not yet have Accession numbers
AAAS permission
Permission letter from AAAS allowing use of this figure
DNA Sequence data
Sample sites, sample sizes and data for DNA sequences of Neopomacentrus cyanomos and N. taeniurus referred to in this paper.
Petro-platform movements to the Gulf of Mexico
Figure S2 - Numbers of petro-platforms and drill-ships used in the southwest Gulf of Mexico that were constructed at different locations in the Atlantic and Indo-west Pacific. Source of locations; www.infield.com/rigs , accessed July 20 2017.