Possibility that dispersal with a Tsunami wave Disaster promotes biodiversity

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25650135
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Biodiversity/Systematics
• Research Institution: Saitama Prefectural University
• Principal Investigator: KOBAYASHI Norio 埼玉県立大学, 保健医療福祉学部, 准教授 (00400036)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): ÔHARA Masahiro 北海道大学, 総合博物館, 教授 (50221833)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 津波 / 北米大陸 / 移動分散 / 生物地理

Outline of Final Research Achievements

A great deal of debris reached to North American coast by a large Tsunami wave which had occurred with the Great East-Japan Earthquake in 2011. To detect whether Japanese littoral beetles expanded their distribution ranges to North American coast accompanied with debris by this big wave or not, littoral beetle fauna was surveyed at more than 40 localities from North America west coast to North Pacific Aleutian Islands, Unalaska.
As a result of the field survey for three years, six species of Hydrophilidae, one species of Curculionidae, one species of Histeridae, one species of Salpingidae, and one species of Scarabaeidae were collected, however, all these littoral beetles were North American origin. We failed to detect the evidences of dispersal of littoral beetles from Japanese to North American coasts accompanied with the debris by Tsunami wave of 2011 year, whereas it had been reported that some seaweeds migrated from Japanese to North American coast with the debris by this wave.

Free Research Field

進化生物学