Mussel-Mytilicola Transcriptome

Invasive species make excellent models to study host-parasite co-evolution in nature. For instance, it is possible to use the implicit space for time substitution of invasive parasites along their invasion route to study host-parasite co-evolution along a time axis covering ancient to no sympatry. By exposing hosts and parasites from locations along their invasion routes in controlled experiments, it is possible to test whether the mode of evolutionary trajectories are repeated, or if host or parasite populations adapt locally.Mytilicola intestinalis is a parasitic copepod that sits in the guts of mussels. It is an invasive parasite, thought to be native in the Mediterranean and Adriatic Seas, and invaded the Atlantic and North Sea coasts of Europe in the 1930's. Within the Wadden Sea, it spread south-west towards the island of Texel, and north to the island of Sylt, arriving around the same time.Our goal is to understand the evolutionary process leading to phenotypic differences in the mussel-Mytilicola system between Texel and Sylt through dual RNAseq.