Abstract
Natural history collections are fundamental for biodiversity research as well as for any applied environment-related research. These collections can be seen as archives of earth´s life providing the basis to address highly relevant scientific questions such as how biodiversity changes in certain environments, either through evolutionary processes in a geological timescale, or by man-made transformation of habitats throughout the last decades and/or centuries. A prominent example is the decline of the European flat oyster Ostrea edulis Linneaus, 1758 in the North Sea and the concomitant invasion of the common limpet slipper Crepidula fornicata, which has been implicated to have negative effects on O. edulis. We used collections to analyse population changes in both species in the North Sea. In order to reconstruct the change in distribution and diversity over the past 200 years, we combined the temporal and spatial information recorded with the collected specimens contained in several European natural history collections. Our data recover the decline of O. edulis in the North Sea from the 19th century to the present and the process of invasion of C. fornicata. Importantly, the decline of O. edulis was nearly completed before C. fornicata appeared in the North Sea, suggesting that the latter had nothing to do with the local extinction of O. edulis in the North Sea.
Highlights
Ostrea edulis Linnaeus, 1758 or the European flat oyster has been used as food source by humans for centuries
We will focus on the historical distribution of O. edulis found alive and C. fornicata in the North Sea in the 19th, 20th and 21st century
Our study shows a significant decrease of live individuals of O. edulis, a significant increase of empty oyster shells as well as individuals of C. fornicata in the North Sea at the beginning of Historical distribution of Ostrea edulis and the introduced snail Crepidula fornicata the 20th century (Fig 4A and 4B)
Summary
Ostrea edulis Linnaeus, 1758 or the European flat oyster has been used as food source by humans for centuries. The demand for oysters remained high and oyster fishery along the North Sea coasts continued to increase and become more efficient [5]. He was asked to find a way to improve the productivity of the native oyster banks due to the increased demand for oysters He visited oyster beds in the North Sea on the coasts of Germany, France and England to fulfil his contract and brought many specimens of O. edulis back to Kiel and other museums. He concluded that oyster farming as it was carried out in France and Great Britain was not possible at the German coast, and oyster production in the North Sea was already maximized [7]. Most natural populations of the European oyster went extinct in the North Sea in the 1940s [5,9]
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