The world-wide research on ship-aided dispersal of marine organisms and invasions
of non-indigenous species focuses primarily on the plankters, which show the
greatest potential for invading new areas and establishing viable populations in
them, either in the water column (holoplankton) or on the bottom (meroplanktonic
larvae of benthic species settling on the sea floor). As meiobenthic animals usually
lack a pelagic larval stage in their life cycle, no biological invasion study has, to our
knowledge, ever specifically targeted marine transport as a means of meiofaunal
dispersal.
Here we present a set of data showing that the sediment deposited in a ship’s
ballast water tank does support a viable meiobenthic assemblage. We examined
0.015-dm3 aliquots of a 1 dm3 sample from a c. 1.5-cm thick layer of sediment
residue in the ballast tank of MS Donnington, brought to the ‘Gryfia’ Repair
Shipyard in Szczecin (Poland). The samples were found to contain representatives
of calcareous Foraminifera, hydrozoans, nematodes, turbellarians, harpacticoid
copepods and their nauplii, and cladocerans, as well as meiobenthic-sized bivalves
and gastropods. Nematodes proved to be the most constant and most numerous
component of the assemblage. The sediment portions examined revealed the presence of 1–11 individuals representing 11 marine nematode genera. The viability
of the meiobenthic assemblage was evidenced by the presence of ovigerous females
of both nematodes and harpacticoids.
Survival of the meiobenthos in shipborne ballast tank sediment residues
may provide at least a partial explanation for the cosmopolitan distribution of
meiobenthic taxa and may underlie the successful colonisation of new habitats by
invasive meiofaunal species.
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