Marine animal assemblages along the littoral of the Israeli Mediterranean seashore: the Red-Mediterranean Seas communities of species

The Mediterranean Sea has undergone extreme changes over the last 30 millio n years, finally becoming a part of the Tethys enclosed within an internal basin and frequently opening into the Atlantic Ocean and the northern Red S ea. These events left behind them faunal elements from the respective ocean s, which mixed with autochthonous species. The opening of the Suez Canal 13 8 years ago led to a renewed influx of Red Sea species that established the mselves along the littoral, especially in the Levant region, and formed the mixed Red-Mediterranean Seas communities. This study summarises data on sp ecies composition of benthic animal assemblages encountered along the Israe li Mediterranean littoral and sublittoral. The described assemblages are id entified and named according to the leading taxa, separately for hard and s oft substrata. Of over 500 taxa listed in this study, GO species are of Red Sea or Indo-Pacific origin, among them the largest in their respective com munities. Compared with faunal descriptions of the Israeli Mediterranean Se a benthos from the 1970s, two phenomena are now prominent: an increase of R ed Sea immigrant species, and a drastic decline of biodiversity and species richness in several polluted sites, induced by anthropogenic stress. Occur rence of imposexes, pathological phenomena in population structures and abn ormal cytology of selected taxa that disrupts the genetic uniformity accomp any these changes.