Boll. Malacol.

, 44 (9-12): 123-126 (2008)

On the occurrence of Echinolittorina punctata (Gmelin, 1791)

(Gastropoda: Littorinidae) in Puglia, South-Eastern Italy

Paolo G. Albano* (
) & Daniele Trono#

* Department Abstract
of Experimental Evidence of live populations of Echinolittorina punctata on the Ionian coasts of Puglia, South-Eastern Italy,
Evolutionary Biology, is given. These reports extend the known distribution of this species to a new area of the Mediterranean
University of Bologna,
Basin and follow other records clearly describing an ongoing northwards range extension of the species.
Italy, pgalbano@iperbole.
bologna.it,
(
) corresponding author Riassunto
# Copertino (LE), Italy, Si segnalano diverse popolazioni di Echinolittorina punctata per le coste ioniche della Puglia. Questo ritro-
datrono@libero.it vamento estende l’areale conosciuto di questa specie in Mediterraneo. La specie è storicamente conosciu-
ta per le coste meridionali del Mar Mediterraneo e, in Italia, per la Sicilia. Negli ultimi anni i diversi rinveni-
menti pubblicati indicano una chiara estensione dell’areale lungo le coste italiane tirreniche partendo dalla
Calabria per arrivare, tramite la Campania, al Lazio. Le ipotesi di una specie che amplia il suo areale in con-
seguenza dell’aumento di temperatura delle acque del Mediterraneo potrebbe trovare una spiegazione nel
ciclo riproduttivo della specie, attivato proprio dalle alte temperature e inibito da quelle basse.

Key Words
Echinolittorina punctata, Gastropoda, Littorinidae, Puglia, Mediterranean Sea, climate change.

Introduction and south of Gallipoli from December 2007 to July 2008

(Fig. 1). Specimens were photographed alive in the field
Echinolittorina punctata (Gmelin, 1791) is a littorinid gas-
to show in situ habits and in the laboratory to record the
tropod with a distribution extending from West Africa
living animal. Living specimens were then fixed in
to the Mediterranean Sea (Williams & Reid, 2004).
ethanol.
Its Mediterranean distribution has recently been reviewed
Additional records of E. punctata, particularly from Pu-
by Antit et al. (2007). The species is known from Southern
glia, were obtained from Italian collectors and institu-
Spain, the North-African coasts, Israel and Lebanon.
tional collections.
In Italy, the species has been known to live on the coasts
A bibliographical research was carried out to under-
of Sicily for several decades. However, Antit et al. (2007)
stand the historical distribution of the species in Puglia.
hypothesized the species has reached Sicily only in the
19th century. In recent years, the Italian range of E. punc-
tata has rapidly enlarged and several new records have
been published: first on the eastern coasts of the Strait of
Messina (Micali & Giovine, 1983), then in Calabria near
Vibo Valentia (D’Anna, 1997), in Campania at several lo-
calities and in Lazio at S. Felice Circeo (D’Anna, 2001;
Soppelsa et al., 2004). The most recent and most north-
ern record in the Tyrrhenian Sea is to our knowledge at
Borgo Sabotino, near Latina in Lazio (De Santis, 2008).
Italian coasts have been researched by amateur and profes-
sional collectors with great intensity since the 19th century,
so the recent northwards expansion of the range of the
species cannot be explained by a lack of information, and
the hypothesis of an expansion driven by climatological
changes acquires relevance. To further support the knowl-
edge of the range changes of this species, new records of
live populations from Puglia and comments on the histori-
cal presence of the species in the region are given.

Materials and methods

Field research was carried out at several localities on Fig. 1. Location of Gallipoli in Puglia, Italy.
the Ionian coast of Puglia, especially within 20 km north Fig. 1. Posizione di Gallipoli in Puglia. 123
 Discussion
The first authors’ record of E. punctata in Puglia dates
back to December 6th, 2007 when shore collecting in
Parco Regionale “Isola Sant’Andrea Litoranea Punta
Pizzo” (a few kilometers south of Gallipoli) led to the
discovery of a population living on mesolittoral rocks
projecting from the surrounding sand. Although the
rocky shore was narrow, a clear zonation between E.
punctata and Melarhaphe neritoides (Linné, 1758) was ob-
served. E. punctata populated the lower part of the
shore (mesolittoral) and M. neritoides the upper part
Paolo G. Albano & Daniele Trono
along the Italian coasts by ENEA and Società Italiana di
Malacologia which collected data from 1958 to 1997 did
not report any finding of E. punctata from Puglia.
In the past, E. punctata has been cited from Puglia in the
literature in only a few cases. Praus-Franceschini (1906)
records the presence of a lot of this species in the Zoolo-
gical Museum of Naples from Tricase. Tricase is a small
town in southeastern Puglia a few kilometers from the
sea. We were not able to recover this lot in the Museum
(Maio, pers. comm.) and therefore have no data on the
number of specimens and if dead or live collected. It
would have been desirable to check identification (al-

(supralittoral). The population consisted of several tens
of specimens. The same population was observed again
in July 2008, showing that it is likely to be a stable one.
Further research was then carried out during the fol-
lowing months hoping to localize further populations
both north and south of Gallipoli, but results were poor.
However, on June 25th, 2008 a new abundant popula-
tion was found near Torre Sabea, a few kilometers north
of Gallipoli. Here a low rocky coast is present and E.
punctata was found in supralittoral rock pools together
with M. neritoides. Isolated specimens were then found
at Torre Inserraglio, 15 kilometers north of Gallipoli on
June 29th and at Santa Caterina, 10 kilometers north of
Gallipoli.
Contacts with several other collectors yielded data on 6
other lots of E. punctata from Puglia, all from the Ionian
coast and within a few kilometers of Gallipoli, which
seems to be the center of the distribution of the species at
present. All records date to after the year 2000 (Tab. 1).
Some collectors who extensively explored both the A-
driatic and Ionian coasts of Puglia from 1960 to 2000 (G.
Oriolo, P. Piani, B. Sabelli, pers. comm) did not record
this species. Moreover, the census of marine molluscs
though E. punctata is a species difficult to confuse with
others) and verify the content of the label to assess
whether Praus-Franceschini referred to the town in Pu-
glia or to any other place-name around Italy or the Me-
diterranean Basin, since he did not specify the province
or region.
Trono (2006) revised the fauna of Salento, the southern
part of Puglia, and recorded one empty shell from –20
m at Santa Caterina (Lecce) in 1999.
E. punctata is also cited in an old work by Parenzan (1961).
This work describes the malacofauna of the entire Io-
nian Sea, considered by Parenzan to cover the coasts of
central North Africa, Turkey, Greece and from Sicily to
Puglia in Southern Italy. Parenzan did not specify the
locality of the record he reported. However, in the ma-
nuscript list of Parenzan’s collection E. punctata is cited
only from Sicily (Siracusa and Agrigento) and no speci-
mens are recorded from Puglia. Since Parenzan himself
(1970) reported that E. punctata was abundant at that
time in southern Sicily, his record in 1961 is likely relat-
ed to southern Sicily and not to Puglia.
The origin of populations in Puglia is difficult to deter-
mine. However, since summer surface currents are coun-

Locality Latitude Longitude Date Live specimens Collection

Lecce – – May 5th, 2000 3 Tisselli
Gallipoli (Lecce) 40°03'N 17°50'E Summer 2000 4 Renda
Gallipoli (Lecce), Lido Conchiglie
40°06'53"N 18°00'10"E July 25th, 2003 1 Perugia
loc. Montagna Spaccata
Gallipoli (Lecce) Lido S. Giovanni 40°02'53"N 18°00'10"E 2005 20 Perna
Gallipoli (Lecce) Lido S. Giovanni 40°02'53"N 18°00'10"E 2006 50 Perna
Gallipoli (Lecce) Lido S. Giovanni 40°02'53"N 18°00'10"E August 2007 200 Perna
Gallipoli (Lecce), Parco Regionale
“Isola Sant’Andrea Litoranea 40°00'42"N 18°01'11"E Dec. 6th, 2007 77 Albano, Trono
Punta Pizzo”
Gallipoli, Rivabella, Torre Sabea 40°04'47"N 18°00'30"E June 25th, 2008 50 Trono
Torre Inserraglio (Lecce) 40°10'34"N 17°56'02"E June 29th, 2008 2 Trono
Gallipoli (Lecce), Parco Regionale
“Isola Sant’Andrea Litoranea 40°00'42"N 18°01'11"E July 1st, 2008 50 Trono
Punta Pizzo”
Santa Caterina (Lecce) 40°08'34"N 17°58'35"E July 12th, 2008 8 Trono
Tab. 1. Segnalazioni di E. punctata per la Puglia (coordinate secondo il datum WGS84).
124 Tab. 1. Records of E. punctata from Puglia (coordinates by datum WGS84).
ter-clockwise in the Ionian Sea, it is likely they come
from Greece. Records from Greece are rare, however; Ni-
colay & Angioy (1988) record specimens from Keratea
in the Northwestern Aegean Sea, the Academy of Natu-
ral Sciences of Philadelphia, USA, has a lot in its collec-
tion from Rodi (collected before 1976, lot number 18579)
and specimens have been recorded from Crete (Reid,
pers. comm.). This is a different path of extension from
the one described in recent literature from Sicily north-
wards to Calabria, Campania and Lazio which is fa-
voured by the counter-clockwise Tyrrhenian Sea current.
There is not a recent colour illustration of the animal

and it is here provided in Figs 2, 3. The base of the foot
is whitish. The foot and the snout are yellowish with
dark surface pigmentation. The tentacles are yellowish
with two pale grey longitudinal lines. The columellar
muscle is white. The head has black pigmentation on
the surface, but the red coloration of the buccal muscu-
lature is visible by transparency. This description is
based on specimens from Puglia and Capo Mulini (Ca-
tania, Sicily) and matches the description of the animal
given by Rosewater (1970), and accounts of other Echi-
nolittorina species by Reid (2002, 2007).
Conclusions
The lack of records of live specimens of E. punctata be-
fore 2000, together with the lack of any reliable record
in the literature, lead us to conclude that the coloniza-
tion of the coasts of Puglia by E. punctata is a recent
event. This may be seen in the context of a progressive
extension of the range of this species which may be
On the occurrence of Echinolittorina punctata (Gmelin, 1791) (Gastropoda: Littorinidae) in Puglia, South-Eastern Italy
Fig. 2. Live animal of Echinolittorina punctata, Capo Mulini (Catania, Si-
cily), June 12th, 2008.
Fig. 2. Animale di Echinolittorina punctata, Capo Mulini (Catania, Si-
cilia), 12/06/2008.
driven by changes in the physical characters of the seas
with special concern to surface water temperature. Wa-
ter temperature seems to play an important role in the
reproduction of this species, activating the sexual cycle
(Palant & Fishelson, 1968).
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank Paolo Crovato and Henk K. Mienis
who provided references. Nicola Maio, Giovanni Orio-
lo, Edoardo Perna, Piero Piani, Ivan Perugia, Walter

Fig. 3. Live animal of Echinolittorina punctata, Parco Regionale “Isola Sant’Andrea Litoranea Punta Pizzo” (a few kilometers south of Gallipoli, Puglia),
December 6th, 2007.
Fig. 3. Animale di Echinolittorina punctata, Parco Regionale “Isola Sant’Andrea Litoranea Punta Pizzo” (pochi km a sud di Gallipoli, Puglia),
6/12/2007. 125
 Renda, Bruno Sabelli, Morena Tisselli and several other
friends gave information on their records of the species
from Italy. David Reid (Natural History Museum, Lon-
don) improved the manuscript with several comments
and additions.

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