About an assemblage of Granulina species from Southeastern Tyrrhenian Sea and close Messina Strait (central Mediterranean)

An assemblage of five species of Granulina is reported from three stations located at infralittoral and bathyal levels in the northern Strait of Messina and close Tyrrhenian sea. The species were identified as G. marginata (Bivona, 1832); G. minusculina (Locard, 1897); G. mediterranea Landau, La Perna & Marquet, 2006; G. lapernai Smriglio & Mariottini, 2013, and a new cylindrical shaped species elsewhere described as G. zanclea Bogi, Boyer, Renda & Giacobbe, 2016. The wide morphological variability observed in G. mediterranea and in G. lapernai draws uncertain «species limits» and suggests the possible occurrence of sibling species in the examined samples. The absence in the same samples of some well-spread Mediterranean taxa is considered coherent with their documented bathymetric distribution.