<p class="ZootaxaTitle"><strong>Distribution of<em> Sabellaria alveolata</em> (Polychaeta Sabellariidae) in the Mediterranean Sea: update and new findings</strong></p>

Abstract

An update of the geographical distribution of the sabellariid polychaete Sabellaria alveolata (Linnaeus, 1767) within the Mediterranean Sea is provided after checking the known literature. This shallow-water, reef-forming species is first recorded from new sites in southeastern Sicily, both along the Sicily Straits and the Ionian Sea, from where S. alveolata was so far unknown.These new collections also provided material for a detailed description and SEM documentation of morphological features of the operculum and the body.

Architecture and tube structure of Sabellaria spinulosa (Leuckart, 1849): Comparison with the Mediterranean S. alveolata congener

“…The Atlantic‐Mediterranean geographic range of S. spinulosa is similar to that of S. alveolata although showing a more northern Atlantic distribution and, therefore, a more marked cold affinity (see Sanfilippo et al, 2020). In the Mediterranean it shares the same geographical areas (western basin and Ionian Sea) with S. alveolata where it is rarer, but up to now it is the only one to be present also in the Adriatic.…”

“…Sabellaria spinulosa colonizes mesolittoral and upper infralittoral bottoms like its congener S. alveolata . However, it is much rarer and forms smaller and less extensive aggregates (Dubois et al, 2005; Holt et al, 1998; Lisco et al, 2017; Pawlick, 1988; Sanfilippo et al, 2020) or even just isolated tubes (Gadaleta et al, 2015; Lisco et al, 2017). Aggregates grow up to tens of square meters, in the form of pillows up to 60 cm high.…”

Feasibility of the Sabellarid Reef Habitat Restoration

“…In the Mediterranean Sea the genus Sabellaria is represented by the honeycomb worm S. alveolata (Linnaeus, 1767) and the ross worm S. spinulosa (Leuckart,1849). Along the Italian Peninsula biogenic reefs formed by S. alveolata are reported along the western coast including Liguria (Delbono et al, 2003), Latium (La Porta and Nicoletti, 2009), Tuscany (Casoli et al, 2019), Campania (Sanfilippo et al, 2020) and around Sicily (Bertocci et al, 2017a;Sanfilippo et al, 2020), while S. spinulosa reefs are exclusively reported in the Adriatic Sea along the coast of Apulia (Lezzi et al, 2015;Lisco et al, 2017;Gravina et al, 2018), Abruzzo, Marche and Emilia Romagna (Ingrosso et al, 2018).…”

Fractal analysis highlights analogies in arenaceous tubes of Sabellaria alveolata (Metazoa, Polychaeta) and agglutinated tests of foraminifera (Protista)

“…This sabellariid polychaete is a common sedentary, intertidal reef-builder of Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts [40]. In Italy, it mostly occurs along the Tyrrhenian coast and in southern Sicily, where it builds wave-resistant reefs made on sand-sized grains [41]. Not all grains are the same: they differ in several chemicalmineralogical properties, as well as in buoyancy performance; S. alveolata selects them when they are suspended by wave motion according to their local abundance, size and shape, showing a certain preference for bioclastic remains [41][42][43][44][45][46].…”

“…Additionally, we collected only a few, minute portions of bioconstructions (about 15-20 aggregated tubes), paying attention to avoid damaging the reef. Sabellaria alveolata bioconstructions are naturally subject to wave erosion [41,44], which is much more destructive than our removal of small portions.…”