Abstract
The European green crab (Carcinus maenas) is invasive on the West coast of North America, but the ecological consequences of this invasion remain poorly understood. Comparative functional response analysis has arisen as a method of elucidating ecological consequences of invasive species by comparing the impact of these species to native analogues. Through comparative functional response experiments of green crabs and native red rock crabs (Cancer productus) we found that green crab predation increased asymptotically (Type II functional response) when fed increasing densities of Pacific oysters (Magallana gigas), while red rock crab predation displayed a sigmoidal (Type III) response. At high oyster densities red rock crabs consume more Pacific oysters than green crabs do, due to their reduced handling time, though green crabs consume more Pacific oysters relative to their size than red rock crabs. However, compared to red rock crabs, green crabs consume more oysters at low prey densities, which implies that they have a larger, potentially destabilizing impact on low densities of Pacific oysters. As green crabs continue to spread across the West coast of North America, Pacific oysters will face increased predation pressure. Our results show the advantage of using functional response analysis to compare density dependent predation between an invasive species and a native species to predict the ecological consequences of invasions.
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Data availability
The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study and the code are available in the CatchCrabs2019 GitHub repository, https://github.com/emilylim13/CatchCrabs2019.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to the Bamfield Marine Sciences Center (BMSC) for providing space and support, and to NOVA Harvest Ltd. for providing us with oysters. A special thank you to Kate Mill and Allan Roberts for their help setting up and analysing this project, and to Sean Rogers for his valuable feedback prior to submission. We are also endlessly grateful to the many staff and students at BMSC who helped make this project possible. Finally, thanks to the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions, which greatly improved this manuscript.
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We have no funding to report. This research was supported by the Bamfield Marine Sciences Center through the use of facilities and equipment.
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NJE, EGL and TME conceived and designed the experiments. NJE and EGL performed the experiments and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. NJE, EGL, and BRH performed the analysis. All authors revised the manuscript and approved the final draft.
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Animal collection and care followed the guidelines set forth by the Canadian Council on Animal Care under the Animal Use Protocol # UP18-FP-DS-1.
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Ens, N.J., Lim, E.G., Howard, B.R. et al. A comparison of the predatory impacts of an invasive and native crab species using a functional response approach. Biol Invasions 23, 2329–2336 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-021-02508-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-021-02508-5