Extensive Spread of Farmed Seaweeds Causes A Shift from Native to Non-Native Haplotypes in Natural Seaweed Beds
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Date
2015
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Springer
Abstract
Seaweed farming has been the cause of introductions
of non-indigenous seaweed species and genotypes
throughout the world. In Zanzibar, Tanzania, foreign genotypes
of Eucheuma denticulatum were introduced for farming
purposes in 1989, and in recent years a spread of nonindigenous
haplotypes has been reported. The current study
aimed to investigate the presence and extent of introduced
and native haplotypes of E. denticulatum as well as their
relative frequencies, to obtain the severity of the spread of
cultivated seaweed and the current state of the native populations.
The results show that all investigated sites are dominated
by the introduced South-east Asian haplotypes, even
where seaweed farming has never occurred. As the frequencies
of East African haplotypes are remarkably low, this
shows a shift from native to introduced E. denticulatum.
This shift may, at least in part, be caused by earlier overharvest
of natural seaweed populations, and indicates a cryptic
invasion of the introduced haplotypes at the potential cost
of the recovery of the native haplotype populations
Description
Keywords
Seaweed farming, Seaweed beds
Citation
Tano, S.A., Halling, C., Lind, E., Buriyo, A. and Wikström, S.A., 2015. Extensive spread of farmed seaweeds causes a shift from native to non-native haplotypes in natural seaweed beds. Marine Biology, 162(10), pp.1983-1992.