Timarete punctata (Grube, 1859)

Faulwetter, Sarah, Simboura, Nomiki, Katsiaras, Nikolaos, Chatzigeorgiou, Giorgos & Arvanitidis, Christos, 2017, Polychaetes of Greece: an updated and annotated checklist, Biodiversity Data Journal 5, pp. 20997-20997 : 20997

Timarete punctata (Grube, 1859)

Ecological interactions

Native status

Non-native (casual)

Notes

Species complex. Timarete punctata , originally described from the Caribbean, constitutes a complex of cryptic species. Molecular analyses of specimens morphologically identified as Timarete punctata by Seixas et al. (2017) revealed that samples from the West Atlantic and the Pacific comprise two cryptic species, one of them widely distributed and exhibiting a low genetic diversity, the other restricted to a single location. The authors hypothesise that the low genetic diversity of the widely distributed cryptic species could be attributed to a recent human-mediated introduction at these sites. In the Mediterranean reported from Greece ( Maidanou et al. 2017) and Turkey ( Çınar et al. 2014).