First Molecular Record of the Pacific Oyster (Crassostrea gigas, Thunberg 1793) in the Marmara Sea, Turkey

• Published in: Marine Science and Technology Bulletin
• Main Authors: ÖZCAN GÖKÇEK, Emel, ACARLI, Sefa, KARAHAN, Bilge, VURAL, Pervin, KOBAN BAŞTANLAR, Evren
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Adem Yavuz SÖNMEZ 2020
• Subjects: Crassostrea gigas,Invasive species,COI gene,16S mtDNA,Marmara Sea; Pacific; Crassostrea gigas; Pacific oyster
• Online Access: https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/masteb/issue/50769/668529; https://doi.org/10.33714/masteb.668529

The Pacific oyster (Crassostreagigas) has a very important economic potential for aquaculture, but on theother hand, is among the highly invasive species in the world and within theMediterranean ecosystem. In the 1960s, C. gigas was brought to Europefor aquaculture in the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions from Japan andCanada. The Turkish waters are the part of the Mediterranean Sea, which is theworld’s most invaded sea. The invasion of alien species results from marinetransportation and aquaculture activities of non-native species. A heavymaritime traffic is also present in the Marmara Sea, which connects the BlackSea and Mediterranean Sea. The identification of the invasive species and theirdistributions is very prominent in terms of protecting natural habitat andmonitoring the effects of invasive species. In this study, 30 individuals,morphologically identified as C. gigas, were collected from Bandırmabay. The genomic DNAs were extracted from each sample’s muscle tissue usinguniversal salt extraction method. Partial sequences of COI and 16SMitochondrial DNA loci of the sample DNAs were obtained for speciesidentification. The sequences were searched against the database and resultswere retrieved from BLAST. All the sequences obtained in this study showedsignificant similarity with the C. gigas sequences present in thedatabase (E=0). The sample sequences resulted in 9 different haplotypes for theCOI locus (hd: 0.5296 and variance: 0.01256±0.112) and 5 different haplotypesfor the 16S rDNA locus (hd: 0.2529, Variance: 0.01076±0.104). The results ofthis study provided the first molecular evidence for the presence of non-nativePacific oyster individuals in the Marmara Sea.