113 páginas, 4 tablas, 4 figuras, 1 anexo. ; The state-of-art on alien species in the Mediterranean Sea is presented, making distinctions among the four subregions defined in the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive: (i) the Western Mediterranean Sea (WMED); (ii) the Central Mediterranean Sea (CMED); (iii) the Adriatic Sea (ADRIA); and (iv) the Eastern Mediterranean Sea (EMED). The updated checklist (December 2010) of marine alien species within each subregion, along with their acclimatization status and origin, is provided. A total of 955 alien species is known in the Mediterranean, the vast majority of them having being introduced in the EMED (718), less in the WMED (328) and CMED (267) and least in the Adriatic (171). Of these, 535 species (56%) are established in at least one area. Despite the collective effort of experts who attempted in this work, the number of introduced species remains probably underestimated. Excluding microalgae, for which knowledge is still insufficient, aliens have increased the total species richness of the Mediterranean Sea by 5.9%. This figure should not be directly read as an indication of higher biodiversity, as spreading of so many aliens within the basin is possibly causing biotic homogenization. Thermophilic species, i.e. Indo-Pacific, Indian Ocean, Red Sea, Tropical Atlantic, Tropical Pacific, and circum(sub)tropical, account for 88.4% of the introduced species in the EMED, 72.8% in the CMED, 59.3% in the WMED and 56.1% in the Adriatic. Cold water species, i.e. circumboreal, N Atlantic, and N Pacific, make up a small percentage of the introduced species, ranging between 4.2% and 21.6% and being more numerous in the Adriatic and less so in the EMED. Species that are classified as invasive or potentially invasive are 134 in the whole of the Mediterranean: 108 are present in the EMED, 75 in the CMED, 53 in the Adriatic and 64 in the WMED. The WMED hosts most invasive macrophytes, whereas the EMED has the lion's share in polychaetes, crustaceans, molluscs and fish. ; The work was initiated under the auspices of the SEBI2010 - Streamlining European 2010 Biodiversity Indicators - Expert Group 5: Numbers and costs of invasive alien species. Further research on the distribution of alien species in the Mediterranean Sea has been carried out in the frame of the Integrated Project 'SESAME' (Southern European Seas: Assessing and Modelling Ecosystem changes: Project no: 036949) funded by the EU [A. Zenetos, I. Siokou and N. Streftaris] and in the frame of the research project 'The impacts of biological invasions and climate change on the biodiversity of the Mediterranean Sea' (C.N. Bianchi and C. Morri), an ItalyIsrael co-operation funded by the Italian Ministry for the Environment. ; Peer reviewed
Este artículo contiene 11 páginas, 4 figuras, 1 tabla. ; A mass mortality event is devastating the populations of the endemic bivalve Pinna nobilis in the Mediterranean Sea from early autumn 2016. A newly described Haplosporidian endoparasite (Haplosporidium pinnae) is the most probable cause of this ecological catastrophe placing one of the largest bivalves of the world on the brink of extinction. As a pivotal step towards Pinna nobilis conservation, this contribution combines scientists and citizens' data to address the fast- and vastdispersion and prevalence outbreaks of the pathogen. Therefore, the potential role of currents on parasite expansion was addressed by means of drift simulations of virtual particles in a high-resolution regional currents model. A generalized additive model was implemented to test if environmental factors could modulate the infection of Pinna nobilis populations. The results strongly suggest that the parasite has probably dispersed regionally by surface currents, and that the disease expression seems to be closely related to temperatures above 13.5 °C and to a salinity range between 36.5–39.7 psu. The most likely spread of the disease along the Mediterranean basin associated with scattered survival spots and very few survivors (potentially resistant individuals), point to a challenging scenario for conservation of the emblematic Pinna nobilis, which will require fast and strategic management measures and should make use of the essential role citizen science projects can play. ; This study was financed by the special action project "NACRAS – Evaluación de la magnitud de un evento de mortalidad combinando censos científicos ampliados con observaciones de ciencia ciudadana" cofunded by the Regional Government and Direcció General d'Innovació i Recerca of the Balearic Islands and the European Social Fund 2014–2020. Salinity and temperature data at Alfacs Bay was provided from the "Programa de Seguimiento de la calidad de las aguas, moluscos y fitoplancton tóxico en las zonas de producción de marisco del litoral catalán (PSQAM) de la DGPAM." The authors acknowledge the MEDCLIC project, funded by "La Caixa" Foundation, contributing to the development of the WMOP hydrodynamic model. Maite Vázquez- Luis and Miguel Cabanellas-Reboredo were supported by a postdoctoral contract co-funded by the Regional Government of the Balearic Islands and the European Social Fund 2014–2020. Also, Vázquez-Luis was also supported by a postdoctoral contract Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación (IJCI-2016-29329) of Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades. Elvira Álvarez was supported by a Personal Técnico de Apoyo contract (PTA2015-10829-I) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competiveness. Iris E. Hendriks was supported by Ramon y Cajal Fellowship RYC-2014-14970, cofunded by the Conselleria d'Innovació, Recerca i Turisme of the Balearic Government (Pla de ciència, tecnologia, innovació i emprenedoria 2013-2017) and the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness. Jose Rafael Garcia-March and Jose Tena were supported by the project BF/HEM 15-1662 ; Peer reviewed
Este artículo contiene 18 páginas, 4 figuras. ; Good datasets of geo-referenced records of alien species are a prerequisite for assessing the spatio-temporal dynamics of biological invasions, their invasive potential, and the magnitude of their impacts. However, with the exception of first records on a country level or wider regions, observations of species presence tend to remain unpublished, buried in scattered repositories or in the personal databases of experts. Through an initiative to collect, harmonize and make such unpublished data for marine alien and cryptogenic species in the Mediterranean Sea available, a large dataset comprising 5376 records was created. It includes records of 239 alien or cryptogenic taxa (192 Animalia, 24 Plantae, 23 Chromista) from 19 countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. In terms of records, the most reported Phyla in descending order were Chordata, Mollusca, Chlorophyta, Arthropoda, and Rhodophyta. The most recorded species was Caulerpa cylindracea, followed by Siganus luridus, Magallana sp. (cf. gigas or angulata) and Pterois miles. The dataset includes records from 1972 to 2020, with the highest number of records observed in 2018. Among the records of the dataset, Dictyota acutiloba is a first record for the Mediterranean Sea. Nine first country records are also included: the alga Caulerpa taxifolia var. distichophylla, the cube boxfish Ostracion cubicus, and the cleaner shrimp Urocaridella pulchella from Israel; the sponge Paraleucilla magna from Libya and Slovenia; the lumpfish Cyclopterus lumpus from Cyprus; the bryozoan Celleporaria vermiformis and the polychaetes Prionospio depauperata and Notomastus aberans from Malta. ; The publication of this article is supported by the Open Access Publishing Fund of the International Association for Open Knowledge on Invasive Alien Species (INVASIVESNET; www.invasivesnet.org). Stelios Katsanevakis, Maria Sini and Konstantinos Tsirintanis were supported by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (H.F.R.I.) under the "First Call for H.F.R.I. Research Projects to support Faculty members and Researchers and the procurement of high-cost research equipment grant" (Project Number: HFRI-FM17-1597). Enalia Physis acknowledges Pantelis Patsalou for his support with field-logistics and links with fishers. Fiona Tomas would like to acknowledge funding from FECYT FCT- 14-9319 (¡OJO A LAS INVASORAS! BIODIVERSIDAD Y ESPECIES INVASORAS DEL MEDITERRÁNEO BALEAR). Vasilis Gerovasileiou, Thanos Dailianis and Maria Sini acknowledge the support by the MARISCA project (www.marisca.eu), co-funded (85%) by EEA GRANTS, 2009–2014, and the Public Investments Program (PIP) of the Hellenic Republic (15%). Razy Hoffman acknowledges funding by Yad-Hanadiv foundation, through the Israel Society of Ecology and Environmental Sciences and Israel Nature and Parks Authority (An integrated program for establishing biological baselines and monitoring protocols for marine reserves in the Israeli Mediterranean Sea). Argyro Zenetos and Paraskevi K. Karachle would like to thank the citizenscientists collaborating with the Ellenic Network on Aquatic Invasive Species (ELNAIS – elnais.hcmr.gr). Nikolaos Doumpas, Ioannis Giovos, Periklis Kleirou and Francesco Tiralongo would like to thank all the citizen-scientists that contributed with their shared records and data in the citizen-science project "Is it alien to you? Share it!!!" (https://www.facebook.com/ groups/104915386661854/). Data from Gyaros Island marine reserve were collected under the "GyarosMPA" project, funded by "MAVA Fondation pour la Nature". Data from Corsica coastline were mainly collected in the framework of the "Corsica Alien Network" initiated by "Office de l'Environnement de la Corse". Carla Morri and Carlo Nike Bianchi received financial support from FFARB (funds for basic research activities) by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research. Ergün Taşkın has been supported by TÜBİTAK, Ankara, Turkey (Project Number: 114Y238). The Slovenian authors would like to acknowledge their financial support from the Slovenian Research Agency (research core funding No. P1-0237) and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food of the Republic of Slovenia. Mehmet Fatih Huseyinoglu thanks University of Kyrenia's Scientific Research Project numbered GRN-20191-004. Fabio Crocetta was funded by the COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) Action TD1209 Alien Challenge project. The FRI (HAO DEMETER) team is very grateful to the Marine Strategy Project for financial support. Records of NIS in Jbel Moussa, the National Park of Al Hoceima and Cap des Trois Fourches sites from Morocco were obtained during surveys conducted within the framework of the MedKeyHabitats and the MedMPAnet Projects implemented by UNEP/MAP-RAC/SPA in close collaboration with the Haut Commissariat aux Eaux et Forêts et à la Lutte Contre la Désertification (HCEFLCD) and financially supported by RAC/SPA, Tunisia and the MAVA Foundation, Switzerland (MedKeyHabitats Project) and the European Commission (EC), the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation to Development (AECID), and the French Global Environment Facility (MedMPAnet Project). Jamila Ben Souissi was partially funded by BiodivMex /Chantier MISTRALS. Konstantinos Tsiamis sampling records were retrieved during his post in the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, which he would like to thank for. Periklis Kleitou and Demetris Kletou were supported by the LIFE financial instrument of the European Union – RELIONMED project [Grant Agreement LIFE16 NAT/ CY/000832]. Some of the data included in the dataset were obtained through the marine citizen science platform Observadores del Mar www.observadoresdelmar.es with the support of FECYT FCT-17-12469, LIFE IP Intemares and Fundació Marilles, and through the citizen science site of the Italian Marine Protected Area of "Regno di Nettuno" (islands of Ischia, Procida and Vivara): www.citizensciencerdn.org. Most data from Lebanon were retrieved from social media dedicated to citizen science (Facebook group: Sea Lebanon https://www.facebook.com/ groups/109615625861815/) or fishers and scuba divers WhatsApp groups). Jamila Rizgalla wishes to thank the administration of Regatta for granting a free pass to conduct field surveys and the security personnel for providing a safe environment. Anna Occhipinti-Ambrogi was supported by European Community's Seventh Framework Program VECTORS (Vectors of Change in Oceans and Seas Marine Life, Impact on Economic Sectors). The long lasting collaboration with the ICES Working Group on Introductions and Transfer of Marine Organisms (WGITMO) has been a good forum where many information and ideas could be exchanged within some of the authors (Anna Occhipinti-Ambrogi, Argyro Zenetos, Agnese Marchini, and a wider community of scientists working on biological invasions). A. Rosso and R. Sanfilippo received grants from the Catania University Research Plan 2016/2018. Data from Kuriat island were collected under the "Kuriat project", funded by "MAVA Fondation pour la Nature" executed by SPA/RAC in partnership with the Coastal Protection and Management Agency (APAL) and Notre Grand Bleu (NGB) NGO. The AIS/ERA (Environment and Resources Authority) Maltese data were obtained from the EU funded project EMFF 8.3.1 under the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund 2014–2020 with a total cost of €1.6 million in public eligible EMFF funds (75% EU 25% MT), managed by AIS/ERA (Environment and Resources Authority). The ultimate goals of this European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF 2014–2020) project are to devise a holistic approach towards marine monitoring and develop a comprehensive database of data collected about the Maltese waters. ; Peer reviewed