New records of Parasquilla ferussaci (Roux, 1830) (Crustacea, Stomatopoda) from the Eastern Atlantic and Western Mediterranean

New records of Parasquilla ferussaci (Roux, 1830) (Crustacea, Stomatopoda) from the Eastern Atlantic and Western Mediterranean.— We report the occurrence of the little known stomatopod Parasquilla ferussaci on the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of the Iberian peninsula. Documentation is based on three specimens captured off Isla Cristina (Huelva) in the Gulf of Cadiz, off Fuengirola (Málaga) in the Alboran Sea and off Gavà (Barcelona) in the North–Western Mediterranean. These reports fill the distribution gap between Eastern Central Atlantic reports and previous Mediterranean reports east of the Balearic Islands.


New records
Parasquilla ferussaci (Roux, 1830) is one of the two species of the stomatopod family Parasquillidae (Manning, 1995;Ahyong, 1997) occurring in the Mediterranean Sea. The known distribution of this species comprises the Eastern Central Atlantic from the northern shores of the Gulf of Guinea to the Gulf of Cadiz (Monod, 1951;Pérès, 1964;Manning, 1962Manning, , 1977Manning, , 1978Sardá et al., 1982), the Western coasts of the Iberian peninsula along the Portuguese coasts (Figueiredo, 1962) in the north, including Madeira islands (Biscoito, 1985), and the Mediterranean Sea (Froglia & Manning, 1989;Abelló & Guerao, 2004). Its usual habitat appears to be the muddy bottoms of the upper continental slope at depths comprised between around 175-185 and 700 m (Colloca et al., 2004), but it may also occur on the continental shelf (Dounas & Steudel, 1994;Mori & Tunesi, 2001).
We herein report the occurrence of Parasquilla ferussaci along the Southern and Eastern coasts of the Iberian peninsula, thus filling the distribution gap between the Atlantic and central and Eastern Mediterranean records, and providing an additional record in the Gulf of Cadiz (table 1; fig. 1).
Two of the Mediterranean species entered this sea via the Suez Canal: Erugosquilla massavensis, first recorded in the Mediterranean in 1933 and widely spread in the Eastern Mediterranean (Galil et al., 2002), and Clorida albolitura, recently reported in the Eastern Mediterranean (Ahyong & Galil, 2006). The erythrosquillid Erythrosquilla sp., yet unidentified, has been reported based on a postlarval specimen collected from plankton in the Ligurian Sea (see Froglia, 1992).
The present reports of Parasquilla ferussaci are the first for the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian peninsula and fill the distribution gap between the Atlantic Ocean and the Central Mediterranean populations. The reports of Pseudosquilla ciliata (Fabricius, 1787) by Pérès (1964) in the Gulf of Cadiz and off W Morocco actually refer to Parasquilla ferussaci (see Manning, 1978).
Little is known about the biology of Parasquilla ferussaci. Mori et al. (1998) studied some relative growth features, including its diet, and detected a size at maturity of 20 mm CL, as well as some slight sexual dimorphism in raptorial claw size. Parasquilla ferussaci may be considered an active predator since epibenthic mobile crustaceans constitute most of its prey.