Eastern spread of the invasive Artemia franciscana in the Mediterranean Basin, with the first record from the Balkan Peninsula

Abstract

In the last 30 years since its first appearance in Portugal, the North-American Artemia franciscana has successfully invaded hypersaline habitats in several Mediterranean countries. Here, we review its spread in the Mediterranean Basin since its first occurrence in the 1980s and report its first occurrence in Croatia, based on both morphological identification (adults) and genetic evidence (cysts). The haplotypes we found in the population from this new locality (two of which were new to both the native and invaded ranges of A. franciscana) suggest either direct or secondary introduction from the main harvested cyst sources (Great Salt Lake or San Francisco Bay, USA) and indicate that some genetic native diversity in the species has not yet been captured by existing studies. Our finding means that the species has reached the eastern shores of the Adriatic Sea and therefore is now present on the Balkan Peninsula. We detected that its eastward spread is still continuing, posing a fundamental threat to remaining populations of native Artemia species in Eastern Europe. Keywords invasive species, Artemia franciscana, salt works, Mediterranean Con formato: Español (España) Código de campo cambiado Con formato: Español (España) Con formato: Español (España)

Morphological and molecular clues for recording the first appearance of Artemia franciscana ( ) in Egypt

“…Genomic richness of A. franciscana in the Great Salt Lake (USA) could be identified using COI sequences analysis (Eimanifar et al., 2015). Eastern spreads of this American species to the Mediterranean, prior to Egypt, could be confirmed through hypervariable barcoding region of COI (Ben Naceur et al., 2010; Horváth et al., 2018). COI sequences exhibited a great degree of divergence among diploid and tetraploid individuals of A. parthenogenetica (Perez et al., 1994).…”

Using ISSR Genomic Fingerprinting to Study the Genetic Differentiation of Artemia Leach, 1819 (Crustacea: Anostraca) from Iran and Neighbor Regions with the Focus on the Invasive American Artemia franciscana

“…The sample localities with their geographical coordinates, abbreviations and IPMB voucher are summarized in Table 1. Total genomic DNA was extracted from part of the antenna of adult males and females using the Chelex ® 100 Resin method (6%, Bio-Rad Laboratories, Hercules, CA, USA) [16]. All extracted DNA was stored at −80 • C for subsequent genetic characterization.…”

“…Generally, the long-distance translocations of the American species Artemia franciscana to other non-indigenous regions have occurred as a result of commercial activities, which have been fully documented previously [2,[15][16][17][18]. Artemia franciscana is a successful invader in saltwater ecosystems due to its faster filter-feeding rate, a high potential of reproduction [15,19], and a better physiological immune system, which is associated with nutritional behavior against cestode parasites [15] than the native species.…”

The Impact of the Colonization of the Invasive American <em>Artemia franciscana</em> (Crustacea: Anostraca) on Genetic Differentiation in the United Arab Emirates (Asia)

“…Phylogeographical analysis using mitochondrial COI markers have clearly demonstrated that GSL and SFB were origin of invasive A. franciscana in the Mediterranean area 34,19 . Genetic Additionally, there is no meaningful relationship between American and invasive populations sequences in other haplotypes ( Fig.…”

“…Due to higher reproductive rate and adaptation ability of A. franciscana 14,15 , this species has been selected to culture in non-indigenous natural and artificial environments for industrial aquaculture and fishery activates, so currently it has a wide geographical distribution in the world containing inland salt lakes, coastal saltworks, salt ponds and lagoons. Now, A. franciscana has been colonized in numerous regions across Eurasia, especially in the Mediterranean 9,[11][12][13][16][17][18][19][20] and Australia 21 .…”