Brachidontes pharaonis (P. Fischer, 1870)
Indian Ocean, Red Sea to E. Mediterranean, via Suez (1905): Israel 1937, Sicily 1971, Croatia 1997, Malta 2009… (CIESM). Nowadays, ship-transport is its main vector of distribution.
Original taxon: Mytilus pharaonis.
Adult from Jerba island, Tunisia. 35mm. Original picture provided by D. Šindrbálová (CZ) – (CC BY-NC-SA).
Synonyms: arabicus Lamy, variabilis Krauss.
Variants striata and semistriata.
Fresh dead juvenile specimens, in shallow water, 3km SW. of Katavia, Rhodos island, south east Aegean. 14mm.
Attached to rocks at low tide, Shavei Zion beach, south of Nahariya, NW. Israel. 22,5-25mm.
Above: the mussel figured pl. XI in J.-C. Savigny: “Mémoires sur les animaux sans vertèbres”, Description de l’Égypte - Histoire naturelle, Paris 1809. The description given by Savigny is as succinct as can be: « Genus Mussel, MYTILUS, fig. 5. – This genus of Linné was initially very wide; M. de Lamarck significantly narrowed its limits by the attribution of more focused characteristics. […] The only species displayed fig. 5 does not seem to differ from Mytilus exustus Linné. »
P. Fischer, in “Sur la faune conchyliologique marine des baies de Suez et de l’Akabah” Journal de conchyliologie ser. III vol. X, proposed the epithet pharaonis.
Mytilus variabilis in Krauss: Die südafrikanischen Mollusken, Stuttgart 1848, via BHL.
Juvenile.
Limáni Sisiou, east of Mália, N. Lassithi, N. Crete. 2,9mm.
Isola delle Femmine, Palermo, NW. Sicily. 24mm, 1999.

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