Abstract
The barnacle Megabalanus coccopoma is native to shorelines from Baja California to Peru and has been introduced to a number of other locations including the Atlantic US SE coast, where it was first recorded in 2006. In 2009, the range of M. coccopoma in the SE US extended from Ft. Pierce, FL north to Cape Hatteras, NC with seasonal populations found as far north as Kitty Hawk, NC. During the exceptionally cold winter of 2009/2010, the range of M. coccopoma shifted dramatically due to the dieback of all monitored populations north of Florida. We examined body size, distribution, and density of M. coccopoma during the summers of 2010, 2011, and 2012 to describe the extent of the range retraction and the rate of range re-expansion. In 2010, recruits were found as far north as Tybee Island, Ga, but no established populations were found north of Florida. In 2011 recruits were found at Rodanthe, NC but established populations were still limited to Florida. By 2012 populations were established in Rodanthe, NC, slightly north of its previously known range limit. Estimated rates of range re-expansion were 255.8 km/yr in 2010 and 794.1 km/yr in 2011. Rates of re-expansion to the north in 2010 and 2011 were faster than have previously been reported for any marine species, and are one of the few rates published for any tropical marine invertebrate.
Highlights
Poleward range shifts are becoming increasingly common, a phenomenon which often leads to tropical species moving into historically temperate ecosystems [1,2,3]
The frequency of extreme weather events is predicted to increase with global climate change [10], and extreme warm [11,12] and cold events [13] have been implicated in dramatic decreases in species abundance, but the effects of extreme weather events on range shifts and limits have received less attention than localized consequences of extreme events [14,15,16]
While tropical species are increasingly becoming established in historically temperate regions [17,18], most studies on tropical invaders have focused on local extinctions rather than range shifts [19,20] and little is known about lower thermal tolerances of tropical species, which likely set northern range limits of these species as the tropical belt broadens [21,22,23,24]
Summary
Poleward range shifts are becoming increasingly common, a phenomenon which often leads to tropical species moving into historically temperate ecosystems [1,2,3]. While tropical species are increasingly becoming established in historically temperate regions [17,18], most studies on tropical invaders have focused on local extinctions rather than range shifts [19,20] and little is known about lower thermal tolerances of tropical species, which likely set northern range limits of these species as the tropical belt broadens [21,22,23,24]. Tropical species that have narrow thermal tolerance windows and low acclimatory ability may be vulnerable to extreme cold events, and invasive populations of tropical species may be generally more ephemeral than temperate species when both are moving poleward
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