The Streamlined Rabbitfish Siganus argenteus (Quoy & Gaimard, 1825) in the Mediterranean Sea
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The Streamlined Rabbitfish Siganus argenteus (Quoy & Gaimard, 1825) in the Mediterranean Sea Abdulghani Abdelghani 1 & Sara A.A. Al Mabruk 2 & Fabio Crocetta 3
&
Daniel Golani 4
Received: 30 July 2020 / Revised: 7 September 2020 / Accepted: 10 September 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract The Mediterranean native biota is increasingly threatened by the influx of alien species. More than 100 non-native fishes have entered so far the Mediterranean, the majority of which presumably originated in the Red Sea. Among them, two species of the family Siganidae, namely Siganus luridus and Siganus rivulatus, are now widespread in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and already reached the central parts of the basin. Three further Siganus taxa, namely Siganus fuscescens, Siganus javus, and Siganus virgatus, have also been recorded from the Mediterranean basin, although their records are based on single specimens. We report the first sighting in the Mediterranean Sea of a single specimen of an additional rabbitfish, namely Siganus argenteus. There are no certainties regarding the possible pathway of arrival of this species in Libya; however, Lessepsian migration or shipping constitute the most probable ones. Keywords Alien species . Siganidae . Lessepsian migration . Shipping . Libya
Introduction The Mediterranean Sea is considered a hotspot of biodiversity, with around 17,000 species, of which around a quarter is endemic (Coll et al. 2010; Bianchi et al. 2012). Its native assemblages have been threatened by the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, that connected the tropical Red Sea and the temperate Mediterranean, thus causing an almost unidirectional migration of the Red Sea biota into the Mediterranean Sea. This phenomenon has been termed “Lessepsian migration” in honor of Ferdinand de Lesseps, who initiated the digging of the Suez Canal (Por 1978), and the migration encompasses more or less all phyla, with few more than 600 taxa considered as established (Zenetos et al. 2017). * Fabio Crocetta [email protected] 1
Department of Marine Resources, Omar Al-Moukhtar University, El Bayda, Libya
2
Department of Zoology, Omar Al-Moukhtar University, El Bayda, Libya
3
Department of Integrative Marine Ecology, Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Villa Comunale, I-80121 Naples, Italy
4
National Natural History Collections and Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 91904 Jerusalem, Israel
More than 100 alien fish species have entered so far the Mediterranean Sea, the majority of which presumably originate in the Red Sea, among which rabbitfishes of the family Siganidae Richardson, 1837, herbivorous bony fishes of Indo-West Pacific origin (Fricke et al. 2017; Zenetos et al. 2017). Two Red Sea species, the dusky rabbitfish Siganus luridus (Rüppell, 1829) and the marbled rabbitfish Siganus rivulatus Forsskål & Niebuhr, 1775, have established permanent populations in the Mediterranean basin for decades and now strongly contribute to the local artisanal and purse seine fishe
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