Plasticity, not genetics, shapes individual responses to thermal stress in non-native populations of the European green crab (Carcinus maenas).

Abstract

Temperature is a major driver of individual performance in ectotherms, with this impact depending on stressor intensity and duration. Differences in individual response across temperature, time, and populations are shaped by the interplay between evolutionary adaptation and phenotypic plasticity. Some populations are able to thrive in novel and changing environments despite limited genetic diversity, raising the question of how plasticity and adaptation interact after significant genetic diversity loss. The European green crab (Carcinus maenas) is a textbook example of this phenomenon: invasive populations boast a broad thermal tolerance and exceptional thermal flexibility even after repeated genetic bottlenecks. Despite this loss of diversity overall, prior work has found a strong population-level association between variation at a specific extended genomic region (supergene), cold tolerance, and sea surface temperature. We conducted a series of three experiments using righting response to characterize sublethal thermal tolerance and plasticity in introduced green crab populations, then determined if these factors were associated with supergene genotype for individual adult crabs. Crabs showed signs of stress after exposure to a 30°C heat shock in one experiment. Interestingly, a second experiment exposing C. maenas to repeated 24-hour heat shocks showed that prior heat shock conferred beneficial plasticity during a subsequent event. The third experiment examined cold acclimation over multiple timepoints up to 94 hours. At 5°C, certain crabs exhibited an acclimatory response where righting slowed dramatically at first, and then gradually sped up after a longer period of cold exposure. Several crabs failed to right at 1.5°C, which could be indicative of dormancy employed to reduce energy consumption in colder conditions. There were no significant relationships between individual plasticity and supergene genotype in any experiment. Linking population-level genetic associations with individual-level physiology is complex, and reflects the impact of environmental conditions such as temperature throughout life history in shaping adult phenotype. Our results highlight the robust thermal tolerance and plasticity that adult green crabs maintain despite a substantial reduction in genetic diversity, and underscore the importance of probing population-level genotype-phenotype associations at the individual level.