Experimental quantification of long distance dispersal potential of aquatic snails in the gut of migratory birds

Experimental quantification of long distance dispersal potential of aquatic snails in the gut of migratory birds

van Leeuwen, Casper H. A., van der Velde, Gerard, van Lith, Bart and Klaassen, Marcel 2012, Experimental quantification of long distance dispersal potential of aquatic snails in the gut of migratory birds, PLoS One, vol. 7, no. 3, Article number e32292, pp. 1-7.

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Title	Experimental quantification of long distance dispersal potential of aquatic snails in the gut of migratory birds
Author(s)	van Leeuwen, Casper H. A. van der Velde, Gerard van Lith, Bart Klaassen, Marcel
Journal name	PLoS One
Volume number	7
Issue number	3
Season	Article number e32292
Start page	1
End page	7
Total pages	7
Publisher	Public Library of Science
Place of publication	San Francisco, Calif.
Publication date	2012-03-05
ISSN	1932-6203
Keyword(s)	fresh-water invertebrates south-west spain potamopyrgus-antipodarum digestive-system captive killdeer seed dispersal retention time mallard ducks trade-offs organisms
Summary	Many plant seeds and invertebrates can survive passage through the digestive system of birds, which may lead to long distance dispersal (endozoochory) in case of prolonged retention by moving vectors. Endozoochorous dispersal by waterbirds has nowadays been documented for many aquatic plant seeds, algae and dormant life stages of aquatic invertebrates. Anecdotal information indicates that endozoochory is also possible for fully functional, active aquatic organisms, a phenomenon that we here address experimentally using aquatic snails. We fed four species of aquatic snails to mallards (Anas platyrhynchos), and monitored snail retrieval and survival over time. One of the snail species tested was found to survive passage through the digestive tract of mallards as fully functional adults. Hydrobia (Peringia) ulvae survived up to five hours in the digestive tract. This suggests a maximum potential transport distance of up to 300 km may be possible if these snails are taken by flying birds, although the actual dispersal distance greatly depends on additional factors such as the behavior of the vectors. We put forward that more organisms that acquired traits for survival in stochastic environments such as wetlands, but not specifically adapted for endozoochory, may be sufficiently equipped to successfully pass a bird's digestive system. This may be explained by a digestive trade-off in birds, which maximize their net energy intake rate rather than digestive efficiency, since higher efficiency comes with the cost of prolonged retention times and hence reduces food intake. The resulting lower digestive efficiency allows species like aquatic snails, and potentially other fully functional organisms without obvious dispersal adaptations, to be transported internally. Adopting this view, endozoochorous dispersal may be more common than up to now thought.
Notes	This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Language	eng
Field of Research	069999 Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified
Socio Economic Objective	970106 Expanding Knowledge in the Biological Sciences
HERDC Research category	C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal
Copyright notice	©2012, van Leeuwen et al.
Persistent URL	http://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30046970

Document type:	Journal Article
Collections:	School of Life and Environmental Sciences Open Access Collection

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Citation counts:	Cited 2 times in TR Web of Science Cited 2 times in Scopus
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Created:	Mon, 13 Aug 2012, 12:55:35 EST

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