Introduced species
Shiganova, T. (2008). Introduced species, in: Kostianoy, A.G. et al. The Black Sea environment. The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry, 5.Q: pp. 375-406
In: The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry. Springer: Heidelberg. ISSN 1867-979X; e-ISSN 1616-864X, more
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| Keywords |
Alien species
Shipping
Anadara kagoshimensis (Tokunaga, 1906) [WoRMS]; Beroe ovata Bruguière, 1789 [WoRMS]; Liza haematochila (Temminck & Schlegel, 1845) [WoRMS]; Mnemiopsis leidyi A. Agassiz, 1865 [WoRMS]
MED, Black Sea [Marine Regions]
Marine/Coastal |
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| Abstract |
Due to increasing human activities such as shipping, deliberate stocking, and accidental introduction, a high number of alien species have become established in the Black Sea over the last century. In addition, global warming facilitates the population increase of thermophilic species and their northward expansion from the Mediterranean. As a result, the Black Sea became a pivotal recipient area for marine and brackish water aliens. It infects all other seas of the Mediterranean basin and the Caspian Sea as a donor. Species that have become abundant in all these seas are euryhaline and rather eurythermic, and are widely distributed in the coastal areas of the world’s oceans. As a rule, they are abundant or dominant in their native habitats, where they sometimes cause outbreaks. Such species, with wide environmental tolerance and high phenotypic variability, have developed in high numbers and first became dominant in the Black Sea, and from here they spread to the Sea of Azov and became established in the Caspian and even the Aral Sea. The most euryhaline species also spread south to the Marmara and eastern Mediterranean (mainly the Aegean and Adriatic) Seas. They often greatly affected the recipient ecosystems, first of all the communities in the tropic level they occupy themselves, and thereafter some of them other trophic levels of the ecosystem; and finally, could cause changes in ecosystem functioning and a fundamental rearrangement of the original energy fluxes. The Black Sea became a natural laboratory for invasive biology as recipient and donor area. Some invasions were useful, like the intentional introduction of the gray mullet Liza haematochila and the accidental invasion of ctenophore Beroe ovata, some harmful, the most dramatic example of alien species effects documented was the invasion of a gelatinous predator, the polymorphic ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi. |
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