The complete disappearance of a long standing sacoglossan sea slug population following Hurricane Irma, despite recovery
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The complete disappearance of a long standing sacoglossan sea slug population following Hurricane Irma, despite recovery of the local algal community M. L. Middlebrooks 1 & N. E. Curtis 2 & S. K. Pierce 3,4 Received: 20 December 2019 / Accepted: 2 March 2020 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Hurricanes often have large impacts on shallow marine ecosystems and the organisms living within. Here we document the impact of hurricane Irma to a long-standing population of sacoglossan sea slugs in the Florida Keys, USA. For many decades, researchers have been studying a population of clarki ecotype Elysia crispata at a borrow pit (limestone excavation) on Crawl Key, FL. This sea slug has been of interest due to an unusual relationship with its food algae termed kleptoplasty, where the slug sequesters chloroplasts taken from the food algae inside of its own cells and uses them for photosynthesis. Following Hurricane Irma, multiple intensive searches failed to find any E. crispata. This population, which at one point numbered in the thousands, has now been completely eliminated from this habitat for over two years following the hurricane. However, the algal population which previously sustained these slugs has fully recovered. Although this habitat now appears to be ideal for these slugs in terms of food availability, they have failed to recolonize. The reasons for this are unclear, but are likely due to the very short dispersal larval stage in this species. The loss of this population is unfortunate as it was the one best studied populations of photosynthetic sea slugs. Keywords Hurricane Irma . Florida Keys . Sacolossa . Elysia crispata . Clarki . Population loss
1 Introduction The impacts and recovery of nearshore marine habitats from large scale disturbances caused by hurricane passage have been described in varying detail depending on the habitat and the severity of the storm (Woodley et al. 1981; Rogers et al. 1991; Rogers 1993; Connel 1997; Bythell et al. 2000; Gardner et al. 2005; Rogers and Miller 2006; van Tussenbroek and Barba-Santos 2011). Most studies have focused on hurricane impacts on corals, sponges, and fishes (Woodley et al. 1981; Fenner 1991; Wulff 1995) but the effect of the storms on the free-living invertebrates is less well known and, in particular, almost nothing is known on those species living
* M. L. Middlebrooks [email protected] 1
The University of Tampa, Tampa, FL, USA
2
Ave Maria University, Ave Maria, FL, USA
3
University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA
4
University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
in off reef, nearshore habitats (but see for example, Kobluk and Lysenko 1993; Knowlton et al. 1990). Serendipitously, we have had occasion to observe the effects of two hurricanes (Wilma, in October 2005 and Irma, in September 2017) on a population of sacoglossan sea slugs residing in a borrow pit (limestone quarry) in the Florida Keys. Wilma, on a SW to NE track, passed offshore just to the north of the chain of Keys as a Category 3 storm before making landfall on the west Flo
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