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Do artificial structures alter marine invertebrate genetic makeup?

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Abstract

Human-made structures are increasingly built in marine coastal habitats for a variety of purposes. Offshore oil and gas production platforms are among the largest examples. Yet, biological effects of these increasing density artificial substrata are under evaluated. The objective of our study is to investigate the possible role of offshore platforms in modifying the genetic composition of populations of natural rocky shores species. The serpulid Pomatoceros triqueter was used as a model, and genetic variation was assessed using a 419 bp fragment of the mtDNA COI gene in samples collected on eleven offshore gas platforms, on one coastal buoy on the sandy shore and in four sites located on natural rocky shores in the Adriatic Sea. Deep phylogenetic lineages were uncovered over all samples. Nucleotide diversity and mean number of pairwise differences among haplotypes were significantly smaller in offshore platform samples compared to rocky shores samples. No significant genetic structure was observed over all samples. We found direct evidence of lower genetic diversity on platforms confirming that, although artificial structures attract and support species typical of hard bottoms, they are not analogues of natural rocky habitats.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the EU project EUMAR (European Marine Genetic Biodiversity—EVK3CT2001-00048) and by the AGIP funded research project BIOMARE (Project for the development of methodologies for monitoring the impact of off-shore structures in the northern Adriatic). We thank M. Pierpaoli for assistance in the lab. We are grateful to the Cooperative Society ‘La Romagnola’ (Marina di Ravenna) and to all the people that helped collecting samples.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Biologia Evoluzionistica Sperimentale, Centro Interdipartimentale di Ricerca per le Scienze Ambientali, University of Bologna, 48123, Ravenna, Italy

    Cécile Fauvelot, Federica Costantini & Marco Abbiati

  2. Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, UR227, DYNECAR, EA 926, Laboratoire de Biologie Marine, Université des Antilles et de la Guyane, 97159, Pointe-à-Pitre cedex, Guadeloupe

    Cécile Fauvelot

  3. Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, 1000, Brussels, Belgium

    Massimiliano Virgilio

  4. Royal Museum for Central Africa, 3080, Tervuren, Belgium

    Massimiliano Virgilio

  5. ISMAR CNR, Via Gobetti 101, I, 40129, Bologna, Italy

    Marco Abbiati

Authors
  1. Cécile Fauvelot
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  2. Federica Costantini
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  3. Massimiliano Virgilio
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  4. Marco Abbiati
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Correspondence to Cécile Fauvelot.

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Communicated by T. Reusch.

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Fauvelot, C., Costantini, F., Virgilio, M. et al. Do artificial structures alter marine invertebrate genetic makeup?. Mar Biol 159, 2797–2807 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-012-2040-4

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