Biogeography of benthic marine Amphipods in Mediterranean Sea

Distribution of littoral benthic amphipods off the Levantine coast of Turkey with new records

“…Mediterranean Amphipoda species are divided into 4 main groups where biogeographical distribution is concerned (Bellan-Santini and Ruffo, 2003). Most of the determined species in this study are distributed in the Mediterranean-Atlantic (99 species).…”

“…Twenty-nine species were Mediterranean endemics, 12 species were cosmopolitans, and 3 species (Elasmopus pectenicrus (Bate, 1862), Gammaropsis togoensis (Schellenberg, 1925), and Stenothoe gallensis Walker, 1904) were Indo-Pacific immigrants. (Stefanidou and Voultsiadou-Koukoura, 1995;Sorbe et al, 2002;Bellan-Santini and Ruffo, 2003;Zakhama-Sraieb et al, 2009). However, detailed information on the amphipod fauna of the Levantine coast of Turkey was not available, because of the lack of comprehensive studies.…”

“…Mutlu and Ergev (2008) reported Corophium affine (Bruzelius, 1859) in a study conducted in Mersin Bay, but this species was not specified as a new record in the paper. The natural distribution area of Corophium affine is the coasts of England and the North Sea (Lincoln, 1979), and according to Bellan-Santini and Ruffo (2003), there was no record of this species in the Mediterranean Sea. This species was also not observed in the sampling area of this study.…”

Effects of fish predation on Posidonia oceanica amphipod assemblages

“…P. oceanica meadows form a unique three-dimensional, spatially complex habitat, which provides a wide variety of microhabitats for benthic communities. More than 80 species of amphipod crustaceans are found in P. oceanica meadows (Bellan-Santini 1998) and are an important group of vagile fauna (Mazzella et al 1989;Gambi et al 1992;Sturaro et al 2015). They are one of the most functionally diverse groups of crustaceans and are used for monitoring environmental effects on P. oceanica meadows (Sánchez-Jerez and Ramos-Esplá 1996;Sánchez-Jerez et al 2000).…”

An illustrated key to the soft-bottom caprellids (Crustacea: Amphipoda) of the Iberian Peninsula and remarks to their ecological distribution along the Andalusian coast

“…Although the knowledge of the ecology and taxonomy of amphipod species on the coasts of the Iberian Peninsula has traditionally been considered fragmentary (Jimeno and Turón 1995;Bellan-Santini and Ruffo 1998), an increasing effort has been made during the last decade to understand the biodiversity of caprellids in intertidal and shallow waters of Spanish and Portuguese coasts , especially in the Strait of Gibraltar. However, most of the studies have been focused on algae (GuerraGarcía et al 2009(GuerraGarcía et al , 2010bGuerra-García and Izquierdo 2010) and the knowledge of the caprellids from soft bottoms is still very scarce.…”