Colonisation of the eastern Mediterranean by Red Sea cumaceans, with the description of a new species

• Main Authors: Jordi Corbera, Bella S. Galil
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas 2007-03-01
• Series: Scientia Marina
• Subjects: cumacea; scherocumella; eocuma; new species; alien; erythrean invaders; red sea; mediterranean
• Online Access: http://scientiamarina.revistas.csic.es/index.php/scientiamarina/article/view/24

In samples collected in the course of the national monitoring programme, two interesting cumacean species were collected on the shallow bottoms (6-14 m) of Haifa Bay, Israel. Scherocumella gurneyi, previously known from the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, is recorded for the first time in the Mediterranean Sea. Eocuma rosae is described as a species new to science. Diagnostic characters such as its flattened carapace bearing a sharp marginal carina, the pair of anteriorlycurved acute horns and the pair of dorsal carinae, place E. rosae with other species of the same genus known from the Indo- Pacific Ocean. It is suggested it entered the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal.