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Evidence of rapid evolution of an invasive poaceae in response to salinity

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Abstract

Understanding how environmental factors and short-term evolution affect the growth of invasive plants is a central issue in Invasion Biology. For macrophytes, salinity is one of the main factors determining distribution along estuarine environments. Urochola arrecta is a Poaceae with high invasive potential in several freshwater and estuarine ecosystems. In South Brazilian estuaries, this species is found sparsely in mangroves, and invades successfully freshwaters and areas with low salinity. We experimentally described the U. arrecta tolerance to salt. Furthermore, we tested if the response to the saline gradient depends on the population origin, through an experiment with populations inhabiting estuarine and freshwater ecosystems. We designed the experiment with three populations of this species, expecting that estuarine populations were more resistant to salinity. Plants grew in a salinity gradient and after 40 days we measured macrophytes biomass and length. Salinity was highly stressful for U. arrecta independently of its origin. Even so, plant growth differed significantly among populations. Despite higher growth, the population originated from freshwater habitats presented the fastest decrease in performance indicators with increasing salinity. This result indicates short-term evolutionary changes because all populations grew common-garden conditions in our experiment. Furthermore, salinity did not prevent the full establishment of this plant, since almost all propagules developed roots even in the saline treatments. Differences among populations suggest that invasion potential of this species can be higher than predicted by the environmental conditions of current invaded sites. Constant monitoring in estuarine invaded ecosystems is central to manage invasions in critical ecosystems, such as mangroves areas.

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Not applicable, datasheets are freely available, and meta-data is available at https://lasbufprbio.wixsite.com/home.

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Acknowledgements

A. A. Padial and S. M. Thomaz acknowledge CNPq for continuous financial support (Process Numbers: 307984/2015-0, 402828/2016-0, 301867/2018-6). L. S. Bora also acknowledges CAPES for student scholarship. We also acknowledge Dr. Márcio José Silveira Pereira and Patricia G. Sbais for providing the salt gland data, which were very valuable for our discussion. Finally, we acknowledge Dr. Márcio José Silveira Pereira and Dr. Priscilla de Carvalho for valuable suggestions in a previous draft of this manuscript.

Funding

Student scholarship (L.S.B) was provided by ‘Coordenação de Apoio a Pessoal de Ensino Superior’ (CAPES) and researcher grants (A.A.P and S.M.T) were provided by ‘Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico’ (CNPq).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Programa de Pós-graduação em Ecologia de Ambientes Aquáticos Continentais, Núcleo de Pesquisa em Limnologia, Ictiologia e Aquicultura (Nupelia), Universidade Estadual de Maringá, Maringá, PR, Brazil

    Leticia Siman Bora, Sidinei Magela Thomaz & André Andrian Padial

  2. Laboratório de Análise e Síntese em Biodiversidade, Departamento de Botânica, Programa de Pós-graduação em Ecologia e Conservação, Setor de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, PR, Brazil

    Leticia Siman Bora & André Andrian Padial

  3. Programa de Pós-graduação em Botânica, Departamento de Botânica, Setor de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, PR, Brazil

    André Andrian Padial

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  1. Leticia Siman Bora
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  2. Sidinei Magela Thomaz
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  3. André Andrian Padial
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Contributions

All authors conceived the experiment, LSB carried out the experiment during her Masters course. AAP supervised LSB during her Masters course, including the design of the experiment, data analyses and manuscript writing. SMT co-supervised LSB participating in all steps of the manuscript, from the design to manuscript writing. SMT provided all logistic support and facilities for experiment. All authors also participate in macrophyte samplings.

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Correspondence to André Andrian Padial.

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Appendices

Appendix 1: Experimental representative scheme

See Fig. 3

Fig. 3
figure 3

Experiment representative scheme. Subtitle: RO Rosana Reservoir population, GS Guaraguaçu River population (high salinity region); GN Guaguaçu River population (no salinity region). The salinity treatments are represented in the smaller squares, in mS/cm units (conductivity). Unfilled squares correspond to first experimental block, and filled squares correspond to second experimental block. Representative scheme only, on the experiment the units were randomly distributed along the greenhouse

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Appendix 2: Output of the Mann–Whitney–Wilcoxon Test

See Table 3.

Table 3 Output of the Mann–Whitney–Wilcoxon test testing for differences in performance indicators of U. arrecta between the two samplings of salt water (GS) population
Full size table

Appendix 3: Number of salt glands present in the leaves of U. arrecta populations

See Table 4

Table 4 Average number and standard deviation (SD) of salt glands of all populations (Guaraguaçu, saline region—GS; Guaraguaçu, region with occasional salinity—GN; and Rosana, freshwater population—RO), on leafs and modified leafs on U. arrecta stem
Full size table

Appendix 4: Proportional loss of Urochola arrecta performance indicators along the experiment

See Table 5

Table 5 Proportional loss of Urochloa arrecta performance indicators between paired levels of salt treatments. Salt treatment 0 is the control and all the treatments are in mS/cm unit. Subtitle: GS: population originated from the Guaraguaçu River, saline region; GN: population originated from the Guaraguaçu River at the freshwater or occasionally saline site; RO: population originated from the Rosana Reservoir
Full size table

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Bora, L.S., Thomaz, S.M. & Padial, A.A. Evidence of rapid evolution of an invasive poaceae in response to salinity. Aquat Sci 82, 76 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00027-020-00750-y

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