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Aug
7
2008
When the Arctic ice finally melts away, by around 2050, a gang of North Pacific shellfish are going to finish something they started three and a half million years ago. Writing this week in Science, UC Davis geologist Geerat Vermeij and collaborator Peter Roopnarine argue that at least 56 molluscan lineages have the potential to expand their ranges across the Bering Strait into the North Atlantic. The fossil record shows that such an invasion was interrupted with the widespread establishment of permanent sea ice, a barrier we humans have successfully broken down over the last couple of hundred years. The authors urge us to “anticipate with interest” the molluscan army's progress. That's one way to look at a melting icecap... Source: Vermeij GJ & Roopnarine PD (2008) The coming Arctic invasion. Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1160852
Image: © Russ Hopcroft | NOAA
Filed Under Climate change, Invasive species, Marine |
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The correct number as stated by Vermeij and Roopnarine is: “At least 77 molluscan lineages…have the potential to extend to the North Atlantic via the warmer Arctic Ocean without direct human intervention.”
They do say that 19 of these have Atlantic members but are separated from them by gaps either geographic or genetic; 2 have extinct but no living representatives from the North Atlantic; and 56 have yet to extend beyond the Bering Sea or Chukchi Sea.
The authors also note that the number of molluscan invaders could be much higher, if species with northern limits in Kamchatka and the Aleutian-Commander island arc can expand their ranges northward and join the interoceanic invasion.