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The spiny spider crab Maja goltziana (Crustacea: Majidae) in south Lebanese waters
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Lelli, Stefano Carpentieri, Paolo Colloca, Francesco Ardizzone, Giandomenico |
| Copyright Year | 2008 |
| Abstract | The spiny spider crab Maja goltziana d’Oliveira 1888, is a species of subtropical Atlantic origin (d’Udekem d’Acoz, 1999). It can be found in the eastern Atlantic Ocean from Portugal to the Gulf of Guinea, as well as in the Canary Islands (González Pérez, 1995). Maurin (1968) reported M. goltziana as a common component of the demersal assemblages over detritic–muddy bottoms along the Morocco and Western Sahara coasts. In the Mediterranean Sea it has been occasionally recorded from the Levantine Basin to the Tyrrhenian Sea and it is considered by far the rarest species of the Majidae family (Zariquiey Alvarez, 1968). Due to its rarity, information on its distribution and ecology in the Mediterranean are scarce. Maja goltziana is a eurybathic species, living on a variety of substrata on the continental shelf and upper slope (Soppelsa et al., 2005). Until now, the few specimens found in the Mediterranean were caught at depths between 20 m and 300 m, on soft bottoms with a muddy component of variable quantity (Pallaoro & Dulcic, 2004). So far no more than 20 specimens have been recorded in the Mediterranean. The first specimen was recorded off the Israel coast in the late 1950s (Holthuis & Gottlieb, 1958). From the 1950s the species was recorded in different sectors of the Mediterranean generally with no more than two specimens (Ramadan & Dowidar, 1972; Koukouras, 1979; Kocatas, 1981; Pastore, 1983; Pipitone & Tumbiolo, 1993; Pallaoro & Dulcic, 2004; Vignoli et al., 2004; Soppelsa et al., 2005; Artüz, 2006). We confirmed the presence of M. goltziana in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, documenting the occurrence of a mature ovigerous female and reporting relatively high abundances for this species in the southern Lebanese waters. A total of 52 specimens of M. goltziana (Figure 1) was collected in the south of Lebanon (Tyre) from June 2006 to May 2007, by means of commercial landing (trammel nets and bottom longlines) and experimental fishing surveys. The gear utilized during the fishing surveys was a nylon monofilament gillnet, 2000 m in length and 4 m in height with a stretched mesh size of 26 mm, designed to target the European hake Merluccius merluccius. All specimens have been caught on a sandy–muddy bottom over a wide bathymetric range, between 80 and 275 m depth. For each specimen we measured carapace length (CL; from the median point between the bases of the rostral spines, to the posterior end of the carapace between the intestinal spines) and carapace width (CW; between the bases of third and fourth main lateral spines of both sides) to the nearest 1 mm. The sex was also recorded. Figure 1. Maja goltziana specimens caught in Lebanese waters. |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.1017/S1755267207008676 |
| Volume Number | 1 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://pescalibano.cnrs.edu.lb/media/pub/422.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755267207008676 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
