ORIGINAL PAPER
Successful worldwide invasion of the veined rapa whelk,
Rapana venosa, despite a dramatic genetic bottleneck
Dong-Xiu Xue
.
John Graves
.
Alvar Carranza
.
Sergiy Sylantyev
.
Sergey Snigirov
.
Tao Zhang
.
Jin-Xian Liu
Received: 28 September 2017 / Accepted: 27 May 2018
Ó Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract Biological invasions represent an impor-
tant component of global change, with potentially
huge detrimental effects on native biological biodi-
versity and ecosystems. Knowledge about invasion
history provides information about the invasion pro-
cess and the origin and genetic composition of
invading populations. To clarify the source and
invasive routes of a successful world-wide invader,
the veined rapa whelk, Rapana venosa, genetic
variability of samples from five representative native
populations from coasts of Japan and China and 13
worldwide invasive populations was analyzed using
11 nuclear microsatellite loci. A dramatic decrease of
genetic variation was detected in the invasive popu-
lations compared with the native populations. The
results demonstrated that R. venosa was capable of
establishing itself in many areas despite a dramatic
genetic bottleneck, suggesting that a remarkable
reduction of genetic diversity is not a limiting factor
for short-term success of this invasive species. Con-
sidering the lack of mitochondrial variation previously
observed in the invasive populations, the dramatic
genetic bottleneck and the allele distribution detected
using microsatellites suggested that the original intro-
duced Black Sea population could have been founded
by very few individuals, perhaps only a single female
and a single male. The initial invasive Black Sea
Dong-Xiu Xue and John Graves have contributed equally to
this work.
Electronic supplementary material The online version of
this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-018-1774-4) con-
tains supplementary material, which is available to authorized
users.
D.-X. Xue Á T. Zhang Á J.-X. Liu (&)
CAS Key Laboratory of Marine Ecology and
Environmental Sciences, Institute of Oceanology, Chinese
Academy of Sciences, 7 Nanhai Road,
Qingdao 266071, Shandong, China
e-mail: jinxianliu@gmail.com
D.-X. Xue Á T. Zhang Á J.-X. Liu
Laboratory for Marine Ecology and Environmental
Science, Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science
and Technology, Qingdao 266237, China
J. Graves
Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William
and Mary, Gloucester Point, VA 23062, USA
A. Carranza
Centro Universitario Regional del Este-CURE, Sede
Maldonado Universidad de la Repu
´
blica Uruguay,
Montevideo, Uruguay
A. Carranza
A
´
rea Biodiversidady Conservacio
´
n Museo Nacional de
Historia Natural, Montevideo, Uruguay
S. Sylantyev
DCEE, Institute of Neurology, University College
London, London WC1N 3BG, UK
S. Sylantyev
CCBS, University of Edinburgh, 49 Little France
Crescent, Edinburgh EH16 4SB, UK
123
Biol Invasions
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-018-1774-4
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