Are juveniles as tolerant to salinity stress as adults?: A case study of Northern European, Ponto-Caspian and North American species

Aim: Global biodiversity and ecosystems are highly impacted by anthropogenic activities, such as climate change and introduction of non-indigenous species. As numerous species from the Ponto-Caspian region have established in the North and Baltic Seas, as well as in the Laurentian Great Lakes, there have been large number of studies examining environmental tolerance of these species to determine their future potential to spread. However, many of those studies were conducted only on adult stages, while neglecting the possibility that early life history stages might not be equally resilient. 

Location: Northern European, Ponto‐Caspian and North American regions.

Methods: To determine if juveniles would demonstrate the same environmental tolerance as their parents, we examined the salinity tolerance of adults and juveniles of one Northern European (Gammarus salinus), one Ponto-Caspian (Pontogammarus maeoticus) and one North American species (Gammarus tigrinus). Additionally, we compa...