engleski

Has the racer goby Babka gymnotrachelus (Kessler, 1857) failed to invade the Danube tributaries, the Sava and Drava Rivers?

In recent decades, five species of Ponto Caspian gobies (P-C gobies) have experienced dramatic range expansions outside of their native habitat: monkey goby Neogobius fluviatilis (Pallas, 1814), bighead goby Ponticola kessleri (Günther, 1861), round goby Neogobius melanostomus (Pallas, 1814), racer goby Babka gymnotrachelus (Kessler, 1857) and western tubenose goby Proterorhinus semilunaris (Heckel, 1837) (Roche et al. 2013). All of these species have been recorded in the Croatian part of the Danube River (Polačik et al. 2008a ; Szalóky et al. 2015), with P. semilunaris classified as native to Croatia (Jakovlić et al. 2015). During recent years of intensive research, monitoring and inventory programmes in Croatian large inland waters, 72 specimens of racer goby B. gymnotrachelus were collected at eight locations in 2016 and 2018, and of these, 61 were juveniles. This confirms the establishment of a self-sustaining population in the main channel of the Danube and its small tributary the Baranjska Karašica River in Croatia. However, no progress of this species in the tributaries of the Drava and Sava Rivers has been observed. This reveals that future research should be focused on tributaries, channels and backwaters to confirm their localization only to the Danube River and its North West tributaries in Croatia.

Gobiidae ; alien species ; Danube River ; distribution ; habitat ; future expansion

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