A series of sampling activities in the Tyre Coast Nature Reserve, on the Southern coast of Lebanon, in the context of the project Blue Tyre - Local Partnership for Sustainable Marine and Coastal Development, allowed for the collection of material to study the polychaete fauna of the area, with particular focus on Non-Indigenous Species (NIS). The detection of several taxonomical novelties resulted in the description of five ne...

The new species Bispira causioi sp. nov. is here described. This taxon shares several morphological features, such as the shape of both uncini and companion chaetae, with other Bispira species mostly of tropical origin. The first observation of this taxon, along the Apulian coast, dates back to 2012 and was never recorded before. At the present, it occurs along the whole Italian Coasts, being reported in several pictures by th...

The genus Amphiglena , comprising minute sabellid worms, is known for its cryptic diversity in the Mediterranean region. This study presents the first complete mitochondrial genome for the genus, corresponding to Amphiglena cf. mediterranea “clade IV” sensu Tilic et al. (2019). The mitogenome features 13 protein-coding genes, two rRNAs, and 22 tRNAs, totalling 16,401 base pairs. Notably, a novel gene order was identified, dist...

Sampling activities conducted in the Tyre Coast Nature Reserve, southern Lebanon, to study the marine annelid fauna of the area, allowed for the revision of the diversity of this group in Lebanon. We particularly focused on non-indigenous species (NIS), which were characterised from morphological and molecular points of view. A total of 116 taxa were collected; 10 species are reported here for the first time in the Mediterrane...

The Salento Peninsula represents the eastern-most edge of the Italian Peninsula, and one of the first areas to be invaded by thermophilic non-indigenous species. The diversity of non-indigenous polychaetes occurring along the Salento Peninsula is reviewed based on literature data and new samples. Overall, fifteen non-indigenous polychaetes were recorded; among them, Syllis similisunzima is reported for the first time in the Me...

This Collective Article presents information about 30 species with records in eight countries (Greece, Israel, Italy, Montenegro, Slovenia, Spain, Syria and Türkiye) and six ecoregions extending from the Alboran to the Levantine Seas. The recorded species belong to eight Phyla (4 Chlorophyta, 1 Rhodophyta, 1 Porifera, 3 Cnidaria, 2 Platyhelminthes, 2 Arthropoda, 2 Mollusca and 15 Chordata) as follows: Chlorophyta: Didymosporan...

Due to the presence of companion chaetae on the thoracic notopodia, a feature unnoticed on the material of the original description, the species Pseudobranchiomma tarantoensis (Knight-Jones & Giangrande, 2003) and P. marmarensis (Çinar & Giangrande, 2018) are here transferred to different genera; the former to the genus Sabella Linnaeus, 1767 and the latter to Bispira Krøyer, 1856. A discussion on the boundary existing among t...

This paper is part of a series of studies aimed at understanding the potential exploitation of the biomass of the polychaete worm Sabella spallanzanii (Gmelin, 1791), which is obtained as a by-product of an innovative Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture (IMTA) system. IMTA systems are designed according to an ecosystem approach with the aim to reduce marine monoculture impact while further increasing production via exploitati...