Affiliation:
1. Bamfield Marine Sciences CentreBamfield, BC, Canada V0R 1B0
2. Department of Biological Sciences, University of AlbertaEdmonton, Alb., Canada T6G 2E9
Abstract
Summary
Animals with highly inducible traits may show no inducible response when exposed to a related but wholly novel cue. This appears to be true for the intertidal whelk
Nucella lamellosa
faced with a voracious introduced predator. In the laboratory, we exposed whelks to effluent from two species of predatory crab, the native red rock crab
Cancer productus
and the invasive European green crab
Carcinus maenas
.
Nucella
and
Cancer
have a long shared history in the northeast Pacific, whereas potential interaction with
Carcinus
began here less than 10 years ago. Although
Nucella
responded adaptively to
Cancer
effluent by increasing shell thickness and decreasing somatic growth, there was no such response to
Carcinus
. Furthermore, thicker shelled
Nucella
were less likely to be eaten by
Carcinus.
Because
Nucella
produces thicker shells when exposed to
Cancer
cues, its ability to respond similarly to
Carcinus
depends only on the coupling of the
Carcinus
cue to the existing developmental pathways for adaptive changes in shell form. Such coupling of latent plasticity to a novel cue—via genetic changes or associative learning—could explain many cases of rapid phenotypic change following a sudden shift in the environment.
Subject
General Agricultural and Biological Sciences,Agricultural and Biological Sciences (miscellaneous)
Cited by
47 articles.
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