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Fig. 14: Goniobranchus annulatus in aquarium.                   2010). The absence of early Red Sea records, as well as
                                                                its first records from Greece (see Tsiakkiros & Zenetos,
cessfully adapted, feeding on the algae and Aiptasia spp.       2011), suggested that its presence in the Mediterranean
attached to the hard substrates of the aquarium tanks, for      Sea was most presumably due to shipping transport rather
a period of more than 30 days (Fig. 14).                        than to a passage from the Indo-Pacific through the Suez
                                                                Canal (Lessepsian immigration). However, the mode of
     Close to the area of collection (36.063645°Ν,              introduction of this species remains questionable.
27.997037°Ε) there is a jetty (36.068128°Ν,
28.004172°E), used for the docking of fishing vessels and           On 28 May 2015, a single specimen of Melibe
cargo ships, which supply Rhodes and the neighbouring           viridis was collected from the fishing port of Batroun
islands with construction materials and provisions from         (34.257276°N, 35.657224°E) in Lebanon. The specimen
around Greece. This is probably the vector of introduc-         was captured with a landing net, while wandering betwen
tion of the species into the waters of Rhodes thus support-     the boats at about 1 m depth. A video of the swimming
ing the hypothesis of its introduction in Saronikos Gulf        individual can be visualized at the following webpage:
(Daskos & Zenetos, 2007). However, range expansion              http://youtu.be/uZQrcbRpRdw. So far, the species was
from the already established population in the Levantine        unknown from Lebanon (see Crocetta et al., 2013) and
Sea is also an option.                                          our record fills a gap in its known Mediterranean invaded
                                                                range. This and other published additions (see Ramos-
     The depth and substrate (hard with algae) of the collec-   Esplá et al., 2015) increase taxa the “opisthobranch” fau-
tions agree with that of Greek (Daskos & Zenetos, 2007),        na for Lebanon to 39 taxa. Crocetta et al. (2013) pointed
Cyprian (Tsiakkiros & Zenetos, 2011), Turkish (e.g. Özcan       out a higher proportion (approx. 34%) of alien species
et al., 2010), Lebanese (Crocetta et al., 2013), and Israeli    with respect to native ones in the Lebanese seaslug fauna,
specimens (Pasternak et al., 2011). Coloration agrees with      outstandingly exceeding the range of 10-20% commonly
all specimens from the Mediterranean (e.g. Gökoglu &            estimated for the entire Levantine fauna. With these new
Özgur, 2008), except for that of Daskos & Zenetos (2007).       data, alien, possible alien and cryptogenic fauna (14 spe-
                                                                cies) amounts to 35.9%. Moreover, this rare record adds
     This third record in Hellenic waters, fills the distribu-  to the previous ones from neighboring areas and confirms
tion gap of the species from the western central to the         the presence of the species in the Levantine Sea.
south-eastern part of the Aegean Sea.
                                                                2.7.	New records of blue spotted cornetfish Fistularia
2.6.	Filling the gaps: on the presence of Melibe viridis            commersonii on the Alicante coast (Eastern Spain)
     in Lebanon
                                                                By A. Izquierdo-Muñoz and D. Izquierdo-Gómez

                                                                    The first citation of Fistularia commersonii (Rüppell,
                                                                1838) in the Mediterranean Sea was from Israel (Golani,
                                                                2000) in 2000, but later records report it from Lebanon in
                                                                1975 (Bariche et al., 2014). The species spread rapidly across
                                                                the Mediterranean reaching as far west as Granada (southern
                                                                coast of Spain) in 2007 (Sanchez-Tocino et al., 2007).

                                                                    In January 2015, one specimen of Fistularia commer-
                                                                sonii was captured by a fisherman using a trammel net at
                                                                Urbanova beach (38.28330ºN, 0.50695ºW), at a depth of

By F. Crocetta and M. Bariche

    Melibe viridis (Kelaart, 1858) (Mollusca: Gastropoda:       Fig. 15: Specimen of Fistularia commersonii captured at
Tethydidae) is a conspicuous shallow water Indo-Pacific         Urbanova beach.
opisthobranch, that has invaded the Mediterranean Sea
since the 1970s. It is currently known from the central
and the eastern Mediterranean Sea, including the Adriatic
(Croatia, Montenegro, Italy, Tunisia, Malta, Greece,
Turkey, Cyprus and Israel) (bibliographic and web refer-
ences in Tsiakkiros & Zenetos, 2011). Records from the
easternmost part of the Mediterranean Sea are scarce,
and consist of a few records from Cyprus (Tsiakkiros &
Zenetos, 2011) and a single record from Israel (Mienis,

Medit. Mar. Sci., 16/2, 2015, 472-488	                          481
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