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Advances in the aquatic sciences
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Transplant experiment to evaluate the feeding behaviour of the Atlantic ribbed mussel, Geukensia demissa, moved to a high inorganic seston area

E. Galimany A B C , J. M. Rose A , M. S. Dixon A and G. H. Wikfors A D
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Northeast Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA, 212 Rogers Avenue, Milford, CT 06460, USA.

B Present address: Instituto Español de Oceanografía, Centre Oceanogràfic de les Balears, Moll de Ponent s/n, E- 07015 Palma de Mallorca, Spain.

C Present address: Institut de Ciències del Mar (CSIC), Passeig Marítim de la Barceloneta, 37-49, E-08003 Barcelona, Spain.

D Corresponding author. Email: gary.wikfors@noaa.gov

Marine and Freshwater Research 66(3) 220-225 https://doi.org/10.1071/MF13335
Submitted: 18 December 2013  Accepted: 11 July 2014   Published: 23 October 2014

Abstract

In 2011–12, a field study demonstrated that ribbed mussels from two locations in the north-east Atlantic Coast of the USA used different feeding strategies to adapt to widely differing seston characteristics and achieve the same absorption efficiency. To investigate whether there was local, genetic adaptation of mussels in the two contrasting sites, we conducted a transplant experiment in 2012 in which mussels were moved from the high-plankton, low-inorganic waters of Milford Harbor, CT, to the high-inorganic, low-plankton waters of Hunts Point, Bronx, NY. Results showed that mussels from Milford adapted to the new, poorer-quality seston within 6 days of submersion in Hunts Point waters, which indicates that phenotypic plasticity in the species is sufficient to account for adaptability of the ribbed mussel to Hunts Point conditions. This adaptability makes the ribbed mussel a good candidate for environmental remediation technologies, such as nutrient bioextraction.

Additional keywords: bioextraction, bivalve, filter-feeding, plasticity.


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