Invasion of novel habitats uncouples haplo-diplontic life cycles

Baker's Law predicts uniparental reproduction will facilitate colonization success in novel habitats. While evidence supports this prediction among colonizing plants and animals, few studies have investigated shifts in reproductive mode in haplo-diplontic species in which both prolonged haploid and diploid stages separate meiosis and fertilization in time and space. Due to this separation, asexual reproduction can yield the dominance of one of the ploidy stages in colonizing populations. We tested for shifts in ploidy and reproductive mode across native and introduced populations of the red seaweed Gracilaria vermiculophylla. Native populations in the northwest Pacific Ocean were nearly always attached by holdfasts to hard substrata and, as is characteristic of the genus, haploid–diploid ratios were slightly diploid-biased. In contrast, along North American and European coastlines, introduced populations nearly always floated atop soft-sediment mudflats and were overwhelmingly dominated...