Mytilus galloprovincialis-type foot-protein-1 alleles occur at low frequency among mussels in the Dutch Wadden Sea

The presence of M. galloprovincialis-type genes among the population of mussels in the Dutch Wadden Sea, historically described as M. edulis, was assessed. We applied the molecular technique in which a fragment of the gene coding for an adhesive protein of the byssus of mussels is amplified by PCR and assayed for length using electrophoresis. Among 321 individual mussels collected in August–October 2001 at 14 sites (5 intertidal, 9 subtidal) widely dispersed over the Dutch Wadden Sea, 6 specimens (collected at 5 sites) were found that showed a heterozygote genotype with both the M. edulis- and the M. galloprovincialis-type alleles being amplified; all others were identified as homozygotes for the M. edulis-type allele. Differentiation in frequencies of heterozygotes among sites was not detected. The ofact that the M. galloprovincialis-type allele was present at low frequency (0.0093) may be attributed to one of three possible, and not mutually exclusive, causes: incomplete diagnosticity of this marker, an historically stable introgression zone in the Wadden Sea, or a recent invasion.

Spatially structured genetic variation in a broadcast spawning bivalve: quantitative vs. molecular traits

Understanding the origin, maintenance and significance of phenotypic variation is one of the central issues in evolutionary biology. An ongoing discussion focuses on the relative roles of isolation and selection as being at the heart of genetically based spatial variation. We address this issue in a representative of a taxon group in which isolation is unlikely: a marine broadcast spawning invertebrate. During the free-swimming larval phase, dispersal is potentially very large. For such taxa, small-scale population genetic structuring in neutral molecular markers tends to be limited, conform expectations. Small-scale differentiation of selective traits is expected to be hindered by the putatively high gene flow. We determined the geographical distribution of molecular markers and of variation in a shell shape measure, globosity, for the bivalve Macoma balthica (L.) in the western Dutch Wadden Sea and adjacent North Sea in three subsequent years, and found that shells of this clam are more globose in the Wadden Sea. By rearing clams in a common garden in the laboratory starting from the gamete phase, we show that the ecotypes are genetically different; heritability is estimated at 23%. The proportion of total genetic variation that is between sites is much larger for the morphological additive genetic variation (QST = 0.416) than for allozyme (FST = 0.000–0.022) and mitochondrial DNA cytochrome-c-oxidase-1 sequence variation (ΦST = 0.017). Divergent selection must be involved and intraspecific spatial genetic differentiation in marine broadcast spawners is apparently not constrained by low levels of isolation.