[Introduction and establishment processes of marine species: a study case with the Japanese brown kelp Undaria pinnatifida].

The number of biological introductions has increased since the 1970's and is now considered as the second major cause of the biodiversity erosion, after fragmentation or disappearance of habitat. Beyond the threat they represent for the ecosystem equilibrium, introduced species are interesting models to study fundamental issues in ecology and evolution like the processes of dispersal and adaptation to novel environments. In this context, species introduced over a large geographic range and spectrum of habitats provide an excellent opportunity for comparing the mechanisms that promote introduction and settlement between different environments.

Differential shuffling of native genetic diversity across introduced regions in a brown alga: aquaculture vs. maritime traffic effects.

Worldwide marine invaders, such as the brown alga Undaria pinnatifida, offer challenging models for unraveling the apparent paradox of sustainable settlement of exotic species over a large spectrum of environments. Two intergenic noncoding mitochondrial loci were found to be highly informative at the within-species level. Twenty-five haplotypes were found over the whole dataset (333 base pairs, 524 individuals, and 24 populations).