Meeting Abstract

47.3  Saturday, Jan. 5  Intraspecific variation in heat shock response and cell-cycle modulation in the invasive Carcinus maenas, the European green crab, on the west coast of North America KELLEY, AL*; DERIVERA, CE; Portland State University; Portland State University amandak@pdx.edu

Physiological studies have long been utilized to understand the role of abiotic features in the distribution of native organisms within marine communities. For the invasive decapod Carcinus maenas, environmental temperature has been implicated as the main predictor of establishment success across temperate regions. Therefore, investigations into the regulation of thermotolerance are paramount to identifying those physiologic mechanisms that may facilitate invasion success. A comparative laboratory analysis of Carcinus maenas, the European green crab, sampled from the northern, cold acclimated (British Columbia-BC), and southern, warm-acclimated (California-CA), investigated how these disparate thermal environments resulted in differential expression of proteins involved in the heat shock response and cell-cycle regulation when given heat and cold stresses. This work clearly illustrates that a divergence in physiological phenotypes exist across this meta-population despite having the smallest degree of genetic diversity of all invasive and native populations, and a relatively short invasion timeline of only 20 years.