On the identity and origin of Anadara demiri (Bivalvia: Arcidae)

Abstract

Anadara demiri (Piani, 1981) is an alien species in the Mediterranean Sea extending its range from Turkey westernly to the Adriatic Sea, where it is locally abundant. The species was first identified as Arca amygdalum Philippi, 1847 in the 1970s. The locus typicus of A. amygdalum is China. This first identification has never been discussed and the species has been thought to be of Indo-Pacific origin to date. However, in the Indo-Pacific province no Anadara shows any similarity with A. demiri. Morphological and molecular data suggest A. demiri is closely related to Anadara transversa (Say, 1822), a common species of the eastern coasts of North America. Anadara demiri is hence considered a junior synonym of A. transversa and the origin of this immigration has to be searched in the southern range of this species, maybe the Gulf of Mexico coasts of Florida.

Range expansion, biometric features and molecular identification of the exotic ark shell Anadara kagoshimensis from Galician waters, NW Spain

“…The tree is drawn to scale, with branch lengths measured in the number of substitutions per site. Source of sequences without an accession number was Albano et al (2009). …”

“…The A. transversa clade includes COI sequences from specimens collected in the Mediterranean Sea and originally labelled as A. demiri and A. transversa (Albano et al , 2009), together with one A. transversa sequence mined from GenBank. The genetic distance within this monophyletic clade ranged from 0.006 to 0.058.…”

“…To support the taxonomic identification and explore the evolutionary relationships, BLAST searches were performed using the Galician A. kagoshimensis sequences as query. Also, six COI sequences of specimens of A. demiri and A. transversa , collected at different locations of the Mediterranean Sea, were generously donated by Paolo Albano (University of Bologna, Italy) and labelled according to the original publication (Albano et al , 2009). One A. transversa COI sequence was mined from GenBank (GQ166572) and, finally, an Arca ventricosa Lamarck, 1819 sequence (AB076935) was used as outgroup; the analysis involved 18 COI nucleotide sequences.…”

One hundred years after Pinctada: an update on alien Mollusca in Tunisia

“…Therefore, we prefer to await the collection of somewhat larger individuals before venturing a species-level identification. ALBANO et al (2009) considered from morphological and molecular data that this species, hitherto known in the Mediterranean as A. demiri (Piani, 1982) was very similar, if not identical, to the Western Atlantic A. transversa (Say, 1822).…”

Historical ecology of a biological invasion: the interplay of eutrophication and pollution determines time lags in establishment and detection

“…This is one of the most invasive species in the Mediterranean Sea (Streftaris and Zenetos 2006 ). Its native range is eastern and southern North America (Albano et al 2009 ); it was first detected in the Mediterranean Sea in Izmir (Turkey) in 1977, in Thessaloniki (Greece) in 1993 and then simultaneously along a 200-km coastline from Venice to Ancona in the northern Adriatic Sea in 2000 (Morello and Solustri 2001 ; Rinaldi 2001 ; Mizzan 2002 ). The sudden occurrence of large populations of large-sized specimens over a 200-km-long coastline cannot be explained by the simultaneous introduction of propagules, suggesting a longer introduction history.…”