Inventory and new records of polychaete species from the Cap Bon Peninsula, north-east coast of Tunisia, Western Mediterranean Sea

Abstract

An inventory of polychaete species is presented from the north-east coast of Tunisia with an historic review of the previous literature from Tunisian coasts. Altogether 40 families, 146 genera, and 238 species are currently known from the area, of which 86 taxa, 4 families (Chrysopetalidae, Pilargidae, Protodrilidae and Saccocirridae) and 40 genera (Saccocirrus, Protodrilus, Parathelepus, Thelepus, Petta, Isolda, Brada, Tharyx, Paraprionospio, Jasmineira, Hypsicomus, Euchone, Pseudobranchiomma, Laonome, Galathowenia, Lugia, Pseudomystides, Protomystides, Pirakia, Mysta, Eurysyllis, Parapionosyllis, Streptosyllis, Paraehlersia, Sigambra, Ancistrosyllis, Kefersteinia, Chrysopetalum, Bhawania, Fimbriosthenelais, Subadyte, Panthalis, Dorvillea, Scalibregma, Paradoneis, Cirrophorus, Metasychis, Websterinereis, Euniphysa and Mastobranchus) are new additions to the polychaete fauna of Tunisia. The list, which provides a synthesis of the regional taxonomic work, including coastal areas from Sidi Daoud to the area of Menzel Hurr (Cap Bon Peninsula, Western Mediterranean Sea), can serve as a baseline for future studies.

Polychaete fauna from the intertidal zone of the Kneiss Islands (central Mediterranean Sea)

“…The polychaete species composition in this area is similar to that previously reported from other sites such as the Gulf of Tunis (Ayari & Afli, 2009), the north-eastern coast of Tunisia (Zaâbi & Afli, 2006;Ayari et al, 2009;Zaâbi et al, 2009Zaâbi et al, , 2010Zaâbi et al, , 2012 and in other Mediterranean soft-bottom communities (Dorgham et al, 2014). The species richness observed here is relatively high, considerably exceeding values previously mentioned elsewhere (Dorgham et al, 2014;Gambi et al, 2016) and could be due to the major sampling effort concerning 42 stations over two years.…”

“…The Kneiss Islands represent a site of international interest in Mediterranean Sea in terms of their ornithological diversity (Important Bird Area, SPAMI and Ramsar Site) (Mosbahi et al, 2015). From this study, we identify a total of 92 polychaete species belonging to 25 families unequally distributed between the sampling stations, including the Nereididae, Glyceridae, Eunicidae, Maldanidae, Terebellidae and Serpulidae, which are the The present study lists 42 new species belonging to 20 families, representing new additions to the polychaete fauna of the Gulf of Gabès which were unreported by Ayari et al (2009) and Zaâbi et al (2012). This is related to the fact that most previous studies have covered the north coast of Tunisia rather than the southern sector concerned here.…”

“…More recently, several ecological studies have been carried out along the northwestern and eastern Tunisian coast by Ayari et al (2009) and Zaâbi et al (2009Zaâbi et al ( , 2010Zaâbi et al ( and 2012. Zaâbi et al (2012) presents an inventory of polychaete species from the north-east coast of Tunisia, along with a historic review of the previous literature from Tunisian coasts. Altogether, 40 families, 146 genera, and 375 polychaete species are currently known from this area.…”

Caulleriella mediterranea, a new species of polychaete (Annelida: Cirratulidae) from the central Mediterranean Sea

“…nov. is probably widespread in the Mediterranean Sea, and confused with the congeneric C. alata which shares the peculiar hooded hooks. In particular, most of the identified C. alata from fine sand in the Tyrrhenian Sea (Lardicci et al 1991;Somaschini 1993) and in other Mediterranean localities such as the northeast coast of Tunisia and Cyprus (Çinar 2005;Zaâbi et al 2012) may be referred to C. mediterranea.…”

LifeWatchGreece: Research infrastructure (ESFRI) for biodiversity data and data observatories

“…In addition, this publication complements recent checklists from other areas of the Mediterranean and Black Sea (e.g. Çınar 2005, Castelli et al 2008, Ayari et al 2009, Zaâbi et al 2009, Martín and Gil 2010, Zaâbi et al 2012, Çınar et al 2014 and thus serves as an information resource for future polychaete studies in this biogeographic region.…”