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Fish populations

When the American sea sturgeon swam east

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A colder Baltic Sea greeted this fish from across the Atantic Ocean in the Middle Ages.

Abstract

The two species of Atlantic sea sturgeon on either shore of the North Atlantic, Acipenser sturio in Europe and A. oxyrinchus in North America, probably diverged with the closure of the Tethys Sea and the onset of the North Atlantic Gyre 15–20 million years ago, and contact between them was then presumably precluded by geographic distance. Here we present genetic, morphological and archaeological evidence indicating that the North American sturgeon colonized the Baltic during the Middle Ages and replaced the native sturgeon there, before recently becoming extinct itself in Europe as a result of human activities. In addition to representing a unique transatlantic colonization event by a fish that swims upriver to spawn, our findings have important implications for projects aimed at restocking Baltic waters with the European sturgeon.

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Figure 1: Geographical distribution of two lineages of mitochondrial DNA haplotypes found in Atlantic sea sturgeon from North America and Europe.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Berlin, 10252, Germany

    Arne Ludwig, Dietmar Lieckfeldt & Christian Pitra

  2. Institute of Zoology, University of Rostock, Rostock, 18051, Germany

    Lutz Debus

  3. Department of Environmental Medicine, New York University School of Medicine, Tuxedo, 10987, New York, USA

    Isaac Wirgin

  4. Eurasian Division, German Archaeological Institute, Berlin, 14195, Germany

    Norbert Benecke

  5. Institute for Animal Breeding and Genetics, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, 37075, Germany

    Ingo Jenneckens

  6. Cemagref, Inland Living Aquatic Resources Research Unit, Cestas cedex, 33612, France

    Patrick Williot

  7. Hudson River Foundation for Science and Environmental Research, New York, 10011, New York, USA

    John R. Waldman

Authors
  1. Arne Ludwig
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  2. Lutz Debus
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  3. Dietmar Lieckfeldt
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  4. Isaac Wirgin
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  5. Norbert Benecke
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  6. Ingo Jenneckens
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  7. Patrick Williot
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  8. John R. Waldman
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  9. Christian Pitra
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Arne Ludwig.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Ludwig, A., Debus, L., Lieckfeldt, D. et al. When the American sea sturgeon swam east. Nature 419, 447–448 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/419447a

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