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The invasion history of alien Prosopis (mesquite) in Israel and Jordan is presented, with a detailed description of the introduction, background and the habitats now infested with Prosopis in these countries. While the number of escaped individuals in Israel is still limited, Prosopis has invaded large areas in Jordan and has become the main invasive alien tree in the Jordan valley. It is also now spreading in the canyons of south Jordan. The distinct prosopis invasion patterns in Israel and Jordan are discussed. Control programs are urgently needed in order to contain the proliferation of Prosopis, which now poses a major threat to natural habitats as well as to fallow fields. The ongoing establishment of dense thickets of Prosopis along wadis with year-round water flow is likely to displace native species such as Acacia raddiana Savi, and to alter the function of natural ecosystems.

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a Applying a mathematical model to the period 1982-2016 propose that ocean warming has expanded the niche for harmful algal blooms (HABs) of the species Dinophysis acuminata and Alexandrium fundyense, which can generate shellfish toxicity and pose risks to human health. The authors' model predicts an increase in the growth rate and in the duration of the bloom season for these species, with a "hot spot" being the North Eastern Atlantic (NEA) and North Sea (NS) waters surrounding the United Kingdom. Using ships of opportunity, the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) has surveyed offshore phytoplankton populations (including Dinophysis, but not Alexandrium) in this region since 1958 (2). We used Dinophysis spp. data to evaluate the model's predictions, as species data were not available before 2004.Growth rate is not easily calculated from in situ data, but one might reasonably expect enhanced growth to lead to increased cell abundance. We therefore determined the annual mean CPR surveyed Dinophysis concentration in the NEA and NS. Using the modified Chelton method to remove serial autocorrelation (3), we found that over the modeled period and the whole CPR time series there was no statistically significant positive relationship between Dinophysis abundance and seasurface temperature (4) in the modeled area over either the whole year or the April to September growth season, a result consistent with a previous study (5).Dinophysis-generated shellfish toxicity is related to short-term "bloom" events of elevated abundance. Harm from Dinophysis could therefore increase despite annual abundance decreases, should more frequent or larger blooms occur. Fig. 1 shows that, while there have been periods of large Dinophysis blooms in the region, these mostly occurred during the early 1970s and the late 1980s, and have been followed by a period of briefer bloom events from the mid-2000s until 2014. In Fig. 2, by calculating the percentage of days per year that Dinophysis abundance was greater than two SDs above the mean of the whole series, we also show that there is no increasing trend in number or annual duration of blooms.Understanding the long-term trends of Dinophysis concentrations is important in NEA waters as significant increases in shellfish aquaculture are planned in the region. The work of Gobler et al. (1) is valuable in demonstrating the potential for increasing water temperature to increase the associated HAB risk. However, our data indicate that the modeled increases in D. acuminata growth rate are not evident in terms of increases in the annual mean, number of Dinophysis blooms, or their duration. Gobler et al. used empirical laboratory evidence of increasing D. acuminata growth rate with increasing temperature to parameterize an individual-based model. Dinophysis populations exist within a complex planktonic food web and are often comprised of more than one species, with different environmental preferences. Our results suggest that other factors, such as prey availability, predation, or ecological interactio...

[Extract from Executive Summary] The collection of additional data to facilitate fisheries management has been identified as a priority at the national level via the Scottish Inshore Fisheries Strategy, and at the local level in the management plans of Regional Inshore Fisheries Groups. Data collection implemented by industry offers a potentially cost effective means by which to provide additional information to enhance current stock assessment programmes, and to produce empirical indicators to inform fisheries management. The fundamental driver for data collection should be the purpose for which it is required; however, the regionalisation of fisheries management and increased, and often competing, demands, on our marine space mean that there are many potential uses for industry derived data. This report presents the findings of a single work package in the wider prototypic Scottish Inshore Fisheries Integrated Data System (SIFIDS) project; looking at ways in which inshore fisheries data collection can be improved on. The propose of this work package was to review and evaluate current inshore (shellfish) fisheries data collection and stock assessments in order to determine where it might be possible for industry derived data collection to provide a positive contribution. For the purposes of this work package the focus was limited to brown crab, lobsters, and scallops.