Invasive oysters as new hosts for native shell-boring polychaetes: using historical shell collections and recent field data to investigate parasite spillback in native mussels in the Dutch Wadden Sea

Biological invasions can have manifold effects on native biota, including impacts on species interactions in invaded ecosystems. Among those are effects on parasite-host interactions, for example in cases where invaders serve as a new host for native parasites, leading to an amplification of the parasite population which may ultimately result in increased infection levels in the original native hosts (parasite spillback). In this study, we investigated the potential spillback of the native shell-boring polychaete Polydora ciliata from invasive Pacific oysters ( Crassostrea (Magallana) gigas )... Mehr ...