Through the Suez Canal, Indo-Pacific fish species have colonized the Mediterranean for over 150 years. A study coordinated by Cnr-Irbim suggests that the phenomenon may extend into the Atlantic Ocean as a result of climate change. The work was just recently published in Frontiers in "Ecology and the Environment." "The opening of the Suez Canal in 1896 re-established contact between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, allowing hundreds of exotic species, including more than a hundred tropical fish, to penetrate and invade the mare nostrum - explains Ernesto Azzurro of the Cnr-Irbim of Ancona, the study's author - This phenomenon, often referred to as 'Lessepsian migration' - in honor of the French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps who built the Suez Canal - has forever changed the history of the Mediterranean, with significant ecological and socio-economic impacts". The study, supported by a set of distribution models and tested on ten fish species, demonstrates the possibility of an extended Lessepsian migration, which would require the reconnection of the millions-of-years-separated Indo-Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Some Red Sea species, including the spotted pufferfish "Lagocephalus sceleratus," the flute fish "Fistularia commersonii," and the Golani sardine "Etrumeus golanii," have already been spotted near the Strait of Gibraltar, at the entrance to the Atlantic Ocean.
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