Question

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1. Discuss the ways that larval dispersal can impact the ecology and evolution of organisms in marine systems.

Answer 1

Beginning with the context set by Thorson’s Rule (that the dearth of species with pelagic larval forms at high latitudes is an adaptation to the mismatch between long developmental time and short periods of abundant food), and the bringing of new molecular biological evidence to the discussion, Sven Thatje argues that early life history characteristics and physiological adaptations of Antarctic benthic invertebrates affect their dispersal ability and lead to their diversity and resilience over evolutionary history. From the extreme environment of the Southern Ocean, Craig Young and colleagues take us to the extreme habitats of the deep sea, in a wonderful example of integrative biological research that partners insight gained from laboratory rearing experiments and from field sampling to determine the larval durations of seven bathyal invertebrates with hindcasts generated from a physical oceanographic model of oceanic circulation to explore questions concerning planktonic larval development, dispersal potential of deep-sea species, and how oceanic circulation modifies dispersal.

One of the champion-dispersing species highlighted by Young et al. 2012 was a sipunculan, Phascolosoma turnerae, and its taxon has been the focus of considerable research in larval biology and in the role of dispersal in larval ecology. Sipunculan pelagosphera larvae are renowned for the duration of their larval stage (e.g., Rice 1967) and for their potential ability to disperse (Scheltema and Hall 1975). Anja Schulze and colleagues continue the focus on sipunculan larval dispersal and distribution, presenting a case study for integrating traditional morphological methods with molecular genetic analyses to evaluate the relationships among “cosmopolitan” species.

Once relatively separated, studies of population connectivity, species' distributions, life histories, phylogenetics, biophysics, and physical oceanography have become increasingly integrated (Levin 2006) and, aided by new and improving tools, including molecular biological approaches, this process continues (Cowen and Sponaugle 2009). Efforts in marine conservation and management increasingly rely on integrating the information gained from such studies. Paola Lopez-Duarte and colleagues explore the links between connectivity and metapopulation dynamics of eight species found on the southern Californian coast, synthesizing the results of 12 years of research using elemental-fingerprinting to determine larval origins and connectivity patterns, and highlighting how such studies can contribute to ecosystem management. Research by Eric Treml and colleagues uses a novel modeling approach to understand connectivity that explicitly considers the interaction between the physical environment and a given species’ life history characteristics, especially those that influence larval dispersal. Their approach allows examination of multi-species population connectivity in the Indo-Pacific Ocean across multiple spatial and temporal scales.