Invasive Crustacean Ecology and Interactions

Invasive crustaceans represent a pressing ecological challenge, altering native communities through competition, predation and ecosystem engineering. Many species exploit human‐mediated dispersal pathways, for instance shipping or aquaculture, to establish in new regions. Once established, their interactions often trigger shifts in food‐web dynamics, from altering benthic–pelagic coupling to restructuring habitat complexity. Reproductive flexibility, such as shifting between capital and income breeding, facilitates rapid colonisation across diverse climates. Climatic extremes, both warming trends and episodic cold snaps, further modulate invasion success by limiting or enabling range expansions. Artificial or anthropogenic habitats may inadvertently support invaders by providing thermal refugia or novel resources, enhancing fitness and persistence. Understanding these processes is critical for forecasting invasion trajectories, mitigating impacts on fisheries and conservation priorities, and informing habitat restoration or biosecurity measures at a global scale.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have revealed that the Asian shore crab Hemigrapsus sanguineus exhibits latitudinal flexibility in its reproductive strategy, predominantly relying on stored energy at higher latitudes yet increasing income breeding at lower latitudes. This plasticity in energy allocation underpins continued range expansion along temperate coasts and highlights the importance of reproductive adaptability in invasion success. In a separate investigation, the introduction of the mud crab Rhithropanopeus harrisii into a Baltic Sea ecosystem devoid of equivalent predators was found to trigger a trophic cascade, reducing benthic invertebrate diversity and biomass while driving a shift of nutrients to the planktonic realm. These findings demonstrate how novel predation can precipitate regime shifts, with profound consequences for ecosystem function and water quality.

Invasive Crustacean Ecology and Interactions publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in invasive crustacean ecology and interactions across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Capital breeding: A reproductive strategy in which organisms allocate energy to reproduction from reserves accumulated before the breeding season.

Income breeding: A reproductive strategy in which organisms finance reproductive output using energy acquired during the breeding season.

Trophic cascade: A chain of indirect effects in a food web, where changes at one trophic level propagate to other levels, altering community structure and ecosystem processes.

Regime shift: A large, persistent change in the structure and function of an ecosystem, often triggered by the introduction of a novel species or environmental perturbation.

Range expansion: The process by which a species extends its geographic distribution into new areas, influenced by dispersal ability, environmental tolerance and biotic interactions.

References

1. Shift from income breeding to capital breeding with latitude in the invasive Asian shore crab Hemigrapsus sanguineus. Scientific Reports (2024).
2. Novel crab predator causes marine ecosystem regime shift. Scientific Reports (2018).
3. ‘Caribbean Creep’ Chills Out: Climate Change and Marine Invasive Species. PLOS ONE (2011).
4. Habitat-specific differences alter traditional biogeographic patterns of life history in a climate-change induced range expansion. PLOS ONE (2017).