First record of Charybdis japonica (Crustacea: Decapoda: Portunidae) in the Mediterranean Sea

The possibility of introduction of marine organisms outside their original distribution range by shipping has been long recognized (Catta, 1876; Chilton, 1910). This phenomenon has increased dramatically worldwide in recent decades due to the increase of maritime traffic, speed of vessels and the practice of loading/discharge of ballast waters (Minchin & Gollasch, 2002). Some swimming-crabs of the Indo-Pacific genus Charybdis De Haan, 1833 have proved highly invasive, spreading outside their original range of distribution transported by shipping. Two species, Charybdis hellerii (A. Milne-Edwards, 1867) and Charybdis longicollis (Leene, 1938), have reached the eastern Mediterranean, via the Suez Canal (Holthuis & Gottlieb, 1958), and are common throughout the Levant Basin (Galil et al., 2002). Charybdis hellerii has also reached, most probably with ballast waters, the Caribbean Sea (Campos & Tu¨rkay, 1989) and the US Atlantic coast (Lemaitre, 1995), and has subsequently spread to southern Brazil (Mantellato & Biagi Garcia, 2001). Single adult specimens of two other species were recently collected in the Mediterranean Sea: Charybdis feriata (Linnaeus, 1758) and Charybdis lucifera (Fabricius, 1798) near the harbour of Barcelona, Spain (Abello´ & Hispano, 2006) and off Venice (Mizzan & Vianello, 2009), respectively. The unintentional introduction in New Zealand of Charybdis japonica (A. Milne-Edwards, 1861) was also mediated by vessels (Smith et al., 2003) and today the species is common in the Auckland Bay (Gust & Inglis, 2006). The capture of C. japonica on the Adriatic coast of Italy, Mediterranean Sea, is herein discussed.