The American Blue Crab Callinectes sapidus Rathbun, 1896 (Crustacea: Decapoda: Portunidae) is Rapidly Expanding Through
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The American Blue Crab Callinectes sapidus Rathbun, 1896 (Crustacea: Decapoda: Portunidae) is Rapidly Expanding Through the Mediterranean Coast of Morocco Abdelkhaleq Fouzi Taybi 1
&
Youness Mabrouki 1
Received: 8 January 2020 / Revised: 27 March 2020 / # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Alien species are among the main threats to global biodiversity and are recognized as the second leading cause of extinctions around the world. The invasive American blue crab Callinectes sapidus was recently recorded from Morocco in one single place in the Marchica lagoon. Since its first record, we reported it for the first time from the Moulouya River mouth near the Algerian border and also the mouth of Oued Kert which represents the westernmost record of the species in the Mediterranean at the moment, showing its rapid expansion through the Mediterranean coast of Morocco. Drastic measures are needed to increase monitoring and management of its invasion process. Keywords Rapid expansion . Invasive crab . Colonization process . Moulouya wetland . Ramsar sites
Introduction It is widely recognized that biological invasions by non-native species are an important element of human-induced environmental change and rapidly developing human activities, which are all related to the globalization of the economy and transcendence of human populations (Richardson and Pyšek 2008). Non-native species are a major threat to marine biodiversity following the spectacular increase of invasions by non-native marine and estuarine species worldwide (Occhipinti-Ambrogi 2007), this phenomenon has widely spread as a consequence of human activities and the current global changing (Quignard 1994; Astraldi et al. 1995; Carlton 1996). In the Mediterranean Sea, biotopic colonization by non-native species has progressed and increased since 1970 (Gofas and Zenetos 2003) and now it is creating a serious threat to Mediterranean autochthonous biodiversity (Streftaris and Zenetos 2006; Ojaveer et al. 2015).
* Youness Mabrouki [email protected]; [email protected] Abdelkhaleq Fouzi Taybi [email protected] 1
Faculty of Sciences Dhar El Mehraz, Biotechnology, Conservation and Valorisation of Natural Resources Laboratory, Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University , Fez, Morocco
Non-native species keep being recorded from the Mediterranean coastline of Morocco, ranging from fish as the “mosquitofish” Gambusia holbrooki Girard 1859 and the “mummichog” Fundulus heteroclitus (Linnaeus 1766) to sea slug as the “ragged sea hare” Bursatella leachii Blainville, 1817 and also insect as the North American “water boatman” Trichocorixa verticalis verticalis (Fieber 1851) (Selfati et al. 2017; Taybi et al. 2018a, 2020; Taybi et al. accepted; Mabrouki et al. 2019a). A recent addition to these lists is the portunid blue crab Callinectes sapidus Rathbun, 1896 a ubiquitous species which occurs naturally at the eastern coast of America, between southern Canada and northern Argentina (Williams 1984). It was introduced to Europe at the beginning of the twentieth centu
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