Abstract
The known historical range of Siphonaria pectinata in the Mediterranean basin is unclear so far. Confirmed records come from the Strait of Gibraltar, the African coastline up to Algeria and the Spanish coastline up to Murcia/Valencia area, whilst all those published from additional Mediterranean areas are affected by a high degree of uncertainty. In addition, this taxon occurs in Tunisia (northern shores up to Cap Bon area), Greece (Saronikos Gulf) and Croatia (Split area), where it has been sighted only recently. The three latter records were widely discussed in the current literature due the possible rationale at the basis of the absence of past sightings, and there is a general agreement in considering that the Greek and Croatian records are the result of a human induced introduction. A literature overview on the Mediterranean distribution and alien status sensu lato of the striped false limpet Siphonaria pectinata is here provided for the first time. Concomitantly, the presence of this taxon in Croatia is here shown to date back to 1978 on the basis of material preserved in private collections, and at least to 1960–70 on the basis of local knowledge of Croatian malacologists and shell sizes of specimens collected in 1978. The findings reported in the present paper overall backdate by ca. 30–40 years the presence of this taxon in the Adriatic Sea, and also constitute the first confirmed record of the striped false limpet from the entire northern Mediterranean shores. The present note corroborates the key role of citizen scientists in observing and recording variations in local biodiversity, as well as in contributing new and past distributional data, and concomitantly suggests the necessity of further work in the Mediterranean area to assess the local species distribution and pattern of spread before its designation as alien sensu lato.
Highlights
The known historical range of Siphonaria pectinata in the Mediterranean basin is unclear so far
The known historical range of S. pectinata sensu stricto in the Mediterranean basin is unclear and widely debated. It included the Strait of Gibraltar, the African coastline up to Algeria (Monterosato, 1877, as Siphonaria algesirae; Pallary, 1900, as Siphonaria mouret) and the Spanish coastline up to Murcia/Valencia area (Hidalgo, 1917; Nicolay, 1980; Gofas, 2011), its presence in wider areas has been often stated by other authors
As mentioned above, two noticeable lots of Siphonaria pectinata (Linnaeus, 1758) from Croatia were found in two Italian private malacological collections
Summary
The known historical range of Siphonaria pectinata in the Mediterranean basin is unclear so far. The known historical range of S. pectinata sensu stricto in the Mediterranean basin is unclear and widely debated It included the Strait of Gibraltar, the African coastline up to Algeria (Monterosato, 1877, as Siphonaria algesirae; Pallary, 1900, as Siphonaria mouret) and the Spanish coastline up to Murcia/Valencia area (Hidalgo, 1917; Nicolay, 1980; Gofas, 2011), its presence in wider areas has been often stated by other authors (see below). The presence of unsubstantiated records in the old literature (usually from 1700 to around 1980) is well known to taxonomists and conservation biologists, and even some highly cited species in the literature may have never lived in the area where they have been (sometimes widely) recorded in the past As an example, this may be the case of Locard (1886), who reported S. pectinata from the Mediterranean France (Port-Vendres), and later on Germain (1913) accepted that record while reviewing molluscan fauna from France. Morrison (1972) excluded its presence at the east of Algiers (Algeria), but did not discuss Pallary (1912)
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