Short Communication |
Corresponding author: James W. E. Dickey ( jdickey03@qub.ac.uk ) Academic editor: Eric Larson
© 2023 James W. E. Dickey, Reid S. Brennan, Sheena Suet-Wah Chung, Jonathan M. Jeschke, Gregor T. Steffen, Elizabeta Briski.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Dickey JWE, Brennan RS, Chung SS-W, Jeschke JM, Steffen GT, Briski E (2023) More than we bargained for: Zebra mussels transported amongst European native freshwater snails. NeoBiota 83: 1-10. https://doi.org/10.3897/neobiota.83.97647
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The international pet trade is a major driver of non-native species spread, including species both sold in the trade, and organisms incidentally transported alongside. Here, we document the discovery of invasive zebra mussels, Dreissena polymorpha, in Germany, transported alongside a commonly traded garden pond snail and European native, Viviparus viviparus, ordered from a German pet website. We highlight that the trade poses yet another way in which zebra mussels and other invasive species can expand their invaded range into novel ecosystems. We call for stricter biosecurity enforcement towards sellers, and encourage raising awareness amongst customers to inhibit the further spread of invasive species through the pet trade.
DNA sequencing, Dreissena polymorpha, hitchhikers, invasive species, pet trade, Viviparus viviparus
The international pet trade has facilitated the movement of organisms around the world, and is deemed responsible for a third of all aquatic non-native species (
A high-profile example of an aquarium hitchhiker came in 2021, when zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpha) were detected in 21 US states on aquarium moss balls that had been imported from Ukraine (
Seventy-five V. viviparus (mean shell width ± standard error: 30.44 ± 0.39 mm; shell measured as per Fig.
Zebra mussels, Dreissena polymorpha, found amongst ordered European pond snail, Viviparus viviparus.
Neighbor joining tree from Mega. Bootstrap values are the percentage of trees supporting the shown topology with Mytilus edulis set as the root. The scale bar indicates the number of base differences per site. Unknown Sample 1 and 2 are the two mussels found attached to Viviparus viviparus. These results show that the unknown samples are Dreissena polymorpha.
DNA was extracted from the foot tissue of two mussel specimens using the DNeasy Blood & Tissue Kit (Qiagen, Germany) following the manufacturer’s instructions. A fragment of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) was amplified using primer pair LCO1490 (5’-GGTCAACAAATCATAAAGATATTGG-3’) and HCO2198 (5’-TAAACTTCAGGGTGACCAAAAAATCA-3’) (
Raw COI sequences were assembled and trimmed using CodonCode Aligner v 3.7.1 (Codon Code Corporation). Each sequence was blasted on NCBI (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/) and BOLD (
Alignments to databases of known samples (NCBI, BOLD) showed that the two mussels had high sequence similarity (> 98%) to D. polymorpha. Subsequent phylogenetic analysis further supported the assignment of these samples to D. polymorpha. Note that neighbour-joining and maximum likelihood (results not shown) revealed the same phylogenetic relationships. Therefore, we have high confidence that these samples are D. polymorpha.
While concern surrounds the spread of commensal organisms, pathogens, and incidental organisms associated with non-native species in the pet trade (
Calls have been made for “white lists” of low-risk species that can be sold in the pet trade in place of risky species (
Greater biosecurity practices are also required, and need to be at the forefront of future policy revisions. The recommendations of
JWED and EB conceived the study. JWED discovered the D. polymorpha and prepared the initial manuscript, with DNA sequencing performed by RSB and SSWC. All authors provided valuable input into the development of the final manuscript and have given approval for publication. JWED was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Thanks also to the editor Eric R. Larson, reviewer Ian Duggan and an anonymous reviewer for their constructive feedback and valuable recommendations for improving the manuscript.
List of species and accession numbers used for constructing phylogenetic trees
Data type: table
FASTA file of all sequences used to generate the phylogenetic tree
Data type: FASTA file