Desalination effluents and the establishment of the non-indigenous skeleton shrimp Paracaprella pusilla Mayer, 1890 in the south-eastern Mediterranean

Abstract

A decade long monitoring programme has revealed a flourishing population of the non-indigenous skeleton shrimp Paracaprella pusilla in the vicinity of outfalls of desalination plants off the Mediterranean coast of Israel. The first specimens were collected in 2010, thus predating all previously published records of this species in the Mediterranean Sea. A decade-long disturbance regime related to the construction and operation of the plants may have had a critical role in driving the population growth.