Occurrence of the lessepsian species Portunus segnis (Crustacea: Decapoda) in the Gulf of Gabes (Tunisia): First record and new information on its biology and ecology

The alien blue swimming crab, Portunus segnis (Forskal, 1775), an Indo-Pacific species has been recorded in the Southern Mediterranean Sea since decades, even if its occurrence along the Tunisian coasts was not recorded yet. This paper reports the first record of P. segnis in the Gulf of Gabes, south-eastern Tunisia, with few observations on its biology and ecology. Twenty-four females of P. segnis were accidentally caught by local fishermen in October 2014 in shallow sandy areas covered mostly by seagrass and algal beds. Among these 24 individuals, 14 specimens (58.33%) were ovigerous. The mean carapace length (CL) and width (CW) of ovigerous females were 143.0 +/- 5.8 mm and 67.8 +/- 3.6 …