OBJECTIVES:This study summarised evidence on the prevalence of interpersonal, community and state physical violence against people in insecure migration status.METHODS:We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of primary studies that estimated prevalence of physical violence against a population in insecure migration status. We searched Embase, Social Policy and Practice, Political Science Complete, SocINDEX and Web of Science Social Sciences Citation Index for reports published from January 2000 until 31 May 2023. Study quality was assessed using an adapted version of the Joanna Briggs assessment tool for cross-sectional studies. Two reviewers carried out screening, data extraction, quality assessment and analysis. Meta-analysis was conducted in Stata 17, using a random effects model and several exploratory subgroup analyses.RESULTS:We retrieved 999 reports and included 31 retrospective cross-sectional studies with 25,997 migrants in insecure status. The prevalence estimate of physical violence was 31.16% (95% CI 25.62-36.70, p < .00). There was no statistically significant difference in the estimates for prevalence of violence for men (35.30%, 95% CI 18.45-52.15, p < .00) and for women (27.78%, 95% CI 21.42-34.15, p < .00). The highest point estimate of prevalence of violence was where insecure status was related to employment (44.40%, 95% CI 18.24-70.57, p < .00), although there were no statistically significant difference in the subgroup analysis. The prevalence of violence for people in undocumented status was not significantly different (29.13%, 95% CI 19.86-38.41, p < .00) than that for refugees and asylum seekers (33.29%, 95% CI 20.99-45.59, p < .00). The prevalence of violence in Asia was 56.01% (95% CI 22.47-89.55, p < .00). Europe had the lowest point prevalence estimate (17.98%, 95% CI 7.36-28.61, p < .00), although the difference was not statistically significant. The prevalence estimate during the migration journey was 32.93% (95% CI 24.98-40.88, p < .00). Intimate partner violence attached to insecure status was estimated at 29.10%, (95% CI 8.37-49.84, p = .01), and state violence at 9.19% (95% CI 6.71-11.68, p < .00).CONCLUSIONS:The prevalence of physical violence is a concern among people in a range of insecure migration statuses. Prevalence of violence is not meaningfully higher for people in undocumented status than for people in other types of insecure status.REVIEW REGISTRATION:PROSPERO (CRD42021268772).

Objectives In the UK, a range of support services and interventions are available to people who have experienced or perpetrated domestic and sexual violence and abuse (DSVA). However, it is currently not clear which outcomes and outcome measures are used to assess their effectiveness. The objective of this review is to summarise, map and identify trends in outcome measures in evaluations of DSVA services and interventions in the UK.Design Scoping review.Data sources MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, Social Policy and Practice, ASSIA, IBSS, Sociological abstracts and SSCI electronic databases were searched from inception until 21 June 2022. Grey literature sources were identified and searched.Eligibility We included randomised controlled trials, non-randomised comparative studies, pre-post studies and service evaluations, with at least one outcome relating to the effectiveness of the support intervention or service for people who have experienced and/or perpetrated DSVA. Outcomes had to be assessed at baseline and at least one more time point, or compared with a comparison group.Charting methods Outcome measures were extracted, iteratively thematically grouped into categories, domains and subdomains, and trends were explored.Results 80 studies reporting 87 DSVA interventions or services were included. A total of 426 outcome measures were extracted, of which 200 were used more than once. The most commonly reported outcome subdomain was DSVA perpetration. Cessation of abuse according to the Severity of Abuse Grid was the most common individual outcome. Analysis of temporal trends showed that the number of studies and outcomes used has increased since the 1990s.Conclusions Our findings highlight inconsistencies between studies in outcome measurement. The increase in the number of studies and variety of measures suggests that as evaluation of DSVA services and interventions matures, there is an increased need for a core of common, reliable metrics to aid comparability.Protocol registration https://osf.io/frh2e.

Winter annual plants play an important role in arid and semiarid ecosystems because of their rapid response to resource pulses, which drive primary production that provides resources for herbivores and pollinators. Understanding the factors that control annual plant growth is key to predicting how arid and semiarid ecosystems will respond to changes in climate and resource availability from anthropogenic activities. We used a long-term nutrient enrichment experiment that spanned precipitation and urbanization gradients in central Arizona, USA, to examine the effects of climate, surface soil properties, soil nutrient availability and shrub cover on winter annual plant growth. At a landscape scale, aboveground net primary production (ANPP) of winter annual plants had a positive, nonlinear relationship to the amount of precipitation received from October through March of the current growing season. We found evidence for sequential resource limitation of ANPP initially from water then nitrogen and phosphorus. The resource limitation cascade was modified by surface soil properties and location relative to shrubs (under or between shrubs), highlighting the effect of small-scale factors on large-scale processes. Specifically, gravel cover had a negative effect on ANPP, and the effect of shrub cover on ANPP depended on nitrogen and current season rainfall. Our study emphasizes how small-scale factors, such as gravel cover, nutrient availability and presence of shrubs, can interact with large-scale drivers, such as seasonal precipitation, to affect interannual variation in winter annual plant production in the northern Sonoran Desert. Sonoran Desert landscape showing production of winter annuals 363 x 241mm (300 x 300 DPI)

The hydrology and aquatic ecology of arid environments has long been understudied relative to temperate regions. Yet spatially and temporally intermittent and ephemeral waters characterized by flashy hydrographs typify arid regions that comprise a substantial proportion of the Earth. Additionally, drought, intense storms, and human modification of landscapes increasingly affect many temperate regions, resulting in hydrologic regimes more similar to aridlands. Here we review the contributions of Dr. Nancy Grimm to aridland hydrology and ecology, and applications of these insights to urban ecosystems and resilience of social-ecological -technological systems. Grimm catalyzed study of nitrogen cycling in streams and characterized feedbacks between surface water-groundwater exchange, nitrogen transformations, and aquatic biota. In aridlands, outcomes of these interactions depend on short-and long-term variation in the hydrologic regime. Grimm and colleagues applied hydrological and biogeochemical insights gained from study of aridland streams to urban ecosystems, integrating engineering, social and behavioral sciences, and geography. These studies evolved from characterizing the spatial heterogeneity of urban systems (i.e., watersheds, novel aquatic systems) and its influence on nutrient dynamics to an approach that evaluated human decision-making as a driver of disturbance regimes and changes in ecosystem function.

Calls for investment in green infrastructures, which can provide a range of ecosystem services in support of sustainability and resilience, are increasing amidst the climate crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed for many the important benefits of greenspace to cultural ecosystem services, particularly to individuals' own assessments of their mental and emotional health, or subjective well-being (SWB). This pandemic has also revealed the unevenness of these benefits. In order to better understand the contributions of greenspace to SWB, as well as the distribution of the benefits, during times of shared social-ecological disruption, we investigate perceptions of greenspace and their effect on SWB during the COVID-19 pandemic. We use a mixed methods approach combining data from surveys and interviews conducted with US post-secondary students. Our results indicate that perceiving the outdoors as good for you is related to higher levels of SWB. We also find that both prior experience with nature and current social-environmental circumstances play an important role in shaping this perception. When considered alongside research regarding environmental justice and children's access to nature, these findings suggest a need for both distributional and intergenerational justice in greenspace planning, design, and management, as well as explicit attention to the role of greenspace in coping with future social-ecological disturbance.

In health-care settings, routine enquiry about experiences of trauma is good practice. Yet in research studies, whether to address trauma and how is contested. Some studies prioritise inclusive samples and questions about people's lived experience. Others avoid potentially retraumatising topics and exclude people considered too vulnerable to participate. Safeguarding is essential, but when does protection become paternalism, and who gets to decide this? These questions matter and contribute to why we know so little about the extent and nature of domestic violence and of self-harm during the COVID-19 pandemic.1Chandan JS Taylor J Bradbury-Jones C Nirantharakumar K Kane E Bandyopadhyay S COVID-19: a public health approach to manage domestic violence is needed.Lancet Public Health. 2020; 5: e309Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (85) Google Scholar In 2000, Jon Nicholl wrote that it was immoral for ethics committees to have become barriers to ethical research that could help to improve health care.2Nicholl J The ethics of research ethics committees.BMJ. 2000; 3201217Crossref PubMed Scopus (20) Google Scholar Although the ethical review process has since become more efficient, Nicholl highlights a still relevant tension: how can we balance maximising the benefit of research to society while minimising risk of harm to the individuals taking part? With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, face-to-face survey fieldwork around the world largely ceased (and 18 months later, few surveys have fully resumed). As new data needs emerged, all parts of the research process moved faster.3Murphy E Tierney E Ní Shé É et al.COVID-19: public and patient involvement, now more than ever.HRB Open Res. 2020; 3: 35Crossref PubMed Google Scholar Research that was recognised as a priority for the COVID-19 evidence base was given streamlined permissions, including expediated ethical reviews. However, this change in pace also contributed to a fall in lived experience involvement. Before the pandemic, patients and the public were involved in 80% of the research reviewed by the UK Health Research Agency. In March, 2020, public involvement was 22%. A related effect was a pause on research on specific topics, such as research asking probability samples of the general population about experiences of domestic violence or self-harm, and research focused specifically on affected individuals.1Chandan JS Taylor J Bradbury-Jones C Nirantharakumar K Kane E Bandyopadhyay S COVID-19: a public health approach to manage domestic violence is needed.Lancet Public Health. 2020; 5: e309Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (85) Google Scholar Although university and other ethics committees convened more regularly and processed applications more swiftly than before the COVID-19 pandemic, this came with increased risk aversion. Researchers avoided asking for approaches that were anticipated to maybe cause delay. Committee members were understandably concerned about approving research on sensitive topics, given the reduced ability to direct participants to curtailed and remote services or support. Since the start of the pandemic, few general population surveys have been permitted to ask about violence, abuse, or self-harm. This omission continues to have substantial consequences for the evidence base in England, UK, and elsewhere, serving to hide the scale of harm, and preventing people in need, including victims and survivors, from being heard. As harm to participants is unethical, might exclusion from research also be considered unethical and an epistemic harm? Some standard mechanisms for protection, such as requiring participants to sign quasi-legal documents stating that their consent is full and informed, might serve to protect researchers, data guardians, and institutions more than participants. People who prefer not to sign such declarations are often excluded from research, constituting a hermeneutic injustice in itself. Those participants deemed too vulnerable—or too difficult—to ask might also be excluded on the basis of what others consider to be in their best interests. Even if participants can be informed about a study, that questions can be skipped, and that they might withdraw at any time, decisions about their fitness to be asked are pre-emptively made by a remote external regulatory body. What assumptions are made about competency and protection when research about domestic violence or self-harm is not approved? We know, for example, that assumptions about vulnerability and victimisation intersect with inequalities related to ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, and age. Women have historically been left out of research,4Howard LM Ehrlich AM Gamlen F Oram S Gender-neutral mental health research is sex and gender biased.Lancet Psychiatry. 2017; 4: 9-11Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (44) Google Scholar as have children7Heggarty K Ethics Creep: governing social science research in the name of ethics.Qual Sociol. 2004; 27: 391-414Crossref Scopus (332) Google Scholar and older people. Bayer and Tadd's study of ageism in research found that "of the 155 studies that were of relevance to elderly people, over half had an upper age limit that was unjustified" with none of these needless exclusions challenged by the ethics committees.6Bayer A Tadd W Unjustified exclusion of elderly people from studies submitted to research ethics committee for approval: descriptive study.BMJ. 2000; 321: 992-993Crossref PubMed Scopus (118) Google Scholar Protection against disclosure is often cited when information on ethnicity and sexual identity are removed from or aggregated in archived datasets, restricting analyses. Potential harms identified by ethics committees are not fictional.7Heggarty K Ethics Creep: governing social science research in the name of ethics.Qual Sociol. 2004; 27: 391-414Crossref Scopus (332) Google Scholar There are very real, but often surmountable, challenges. Balance is needed.5Morris A Hegarty K Humphreys C Ethical and safe: research with children about domestic violence.Res Ethics. 2012; 8: 122-139Crossref Google Scholar For example, even though surveying all household members about domestic violence could alert a potential offender that a disclosure has occurred, we reduce this risk by including such questions only on surveys asked of one household member.8Ellsberg M Heise L Bearing witness: ethics in domestic violence research.Lancet. 2002; 359: 1599-1604Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (160) Google Scholar Additionally, evidence suggests that rather than increasing risk, acknowledging and talking about suicide in research might reduce suicidal ideation and lead to improvements in mental health in treatment-seeking populations.9Dazzi T Gribble R Wessely S Fear NT Does asking about suicide and related behaviours induce suicidal ideation? What is the evidence?.Psychol Med. 2014; 44: 3361-3363Crossref PubMed Scopus (114) Google Scholar Further steps to mitigate risk include training interviewers to manage psychological distress, consistently monitoring participants' emotional reactions, providing frequent breaks, debriefing, and providing information on available psychological or social services.10Draucker CB Martsolf DS Poole C Developing distress protocols for research on sensitive topics.Arch Psychiatr Nurs. 2009; 23: 343-350Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (74) Google Scholar The topics and people excluded from research cannot be counted or represented, and information on their experiences are not available to inform policy or services. Who is protected when such research is not allowed? AJ reports grants from Medical Research Council. KB reports grants from the National Institute for Health Research, the Barts Charity, and the McPin Foundation. All other authors declare no competing interests.

Urban resilience has gained considerable popularity in planning and policy to address cities’ capacity to cope with climate change. While many studies discuss the different ways that academics define resilience, little attention has been given to how resilience is conceptualized across different urban contexts and among the actors that engage in building resilience ‘on the ground’. Given the implications that resilience frames can have for the solutions that are pursued (and who benefits from them), it is important to examine how transformative definitions of urban resilience are in practice. In this paper, we use data from a survey of nine US and Latin American and Caribbean cities to explore how the concept is framed across multiple governance sectors, including governmental, non-governmental, business, research, and hybrid organizations. We examine these framings in light of recent conceptual developments and tensions found in the literature. The results highlight that, in general across the nine cities, framings converge with definitions of resilience as the ability to resist, cope with, or bounce back to previous conditions, whereas sustainability, equity, and social-ecological-technological systems (SETS) perspectives are rarely associated with resilience. There are noticeable differences across cities and governance actors that point to geographic and political variation in the way resilience is conceptualized. We unpack these differences and discuss their implications for resilience research and practice moving forward. We argue that if resilience is going to remain a major goal for city policies into the future, it needs to be conceived in a more transformative, anticipatory, and equitable way, and acknowledge interconnected SETS.

The act of witnessing the suffering of others is an unfortunately characteristic feature of modern life. Contemporary media culture has prompted a proliferation of new ways of seeing and spectating irrespective of where, when, or who you are. The trends towards globalisation, the collapse of public and private spheres in late modernity, and the saturation of society with visual representations of suffering have encouraged us to understand, empathise with and imagine the suffering of others. These developments have raised new questions in criminology regarding the moral responsibility of witnessing suffering, the ethics of spectatorship and the dangers of empty gestures of outrage and voyeurism. Following Richard Quinney's notion of 'criminologists as witnesses', this chapter explores the responsibilities of criminologists in bearing witness to the aftermath of mass atrocities. The discussion draws upon fieldwork reflections on attending the commemoration of the 20th Anniversary of the Srebrenica Massacre at the Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial and Cemetery in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The notion of witnessing is used here as a way of making sense of these experiences arguing that criminologists should move beyond mere spectatorship and towards how we act upon these experiences. The act of witnessing can be uncomfortable and unfamiliar. However, for an exhaustive insight into lethal violence these emotions must be written in rather than written out of criminological research.

The challenge of ensuring that urban resilience agendas do not compromise sustainability and equity goals demands that our cities be capable of envisioning future pathways and anticipating trade-offs of resilience strategies and solutions. While future-thinking is a common practice in urban planning, cities will need to get more ambitious about how they factor in foresight and unintended consequences of actions at very distant temporal scales into the knowledge systems that underpin their planning and decision-making. We ask, to what extent is the knowledge coming to bear on urban resilience planning and strategies inclusive of sustainability and equity goals? What kinds of upgrades or innovations are needed to make city knowledge systems more anticipatory? We draw upon the knowledge-action systems analysis (KASA) currently implemented in multiple US and Latin America cities to explore the types and networks of knowledge shaping urban resilience in different context and how conducive they are to moving beyond risk-based knowledge systems to enhancing anticipatory capacities for cities.

This panel is intended to promote broad-based discussion of key approaches to conceptualizing urban resilience, to compare insights in how to engage with practitioners from a network of cities at all stages of research and implementation, to refine new approaches to co-producing urban resilience to extreme events, and to evaluate cross-cultural differences of perspective on urban resilience and sustainability.

Positive future visioning and scenario development are important tools for guiding urban sustainability and resilience planning. Sustainability and resilience pathways for the long-term future are often difficult to envision and may often be different or even be incompatible. The co-development of future scenarios with local practitioners allows for the exploration of diverse plausible and desirable futures, while examiningpotential social-ecological-technological solutions, conflicts, and tradeoffs. In particular, the co-production of scenarios frees both practitioners and researchers from the typically problem-oriented focus on the short-term future and allows for positivelong-term visions, social-ecological-technological innovation, and transformational changes. We present a framework for co-developing sustainability-based future scenarios with local stakeholders to explore alternative plausible, desirable, and resilient urban futures. Through a series of workshops with local partners in cities across North and Latin America, we co-develop scenarios to address urban sustainability and resilience challenges, such as extreme climatic events, changing resource availability, and equity concerns. Through the scenarios co-development process, we develop tangible future visions with temporally and spatially explicit social-ecological-technological strategies, pathways, and targets to address the scenario challenges. Finally, we evaluate tradeoffs among the scenarios based on qualitative and quantitative sustainability and resilience assessments of each scenario. We present examples from the scenario development process in diverse cities with diverse challenges and future visions, including San Juan Puerto Rico, Valdivia Chile, New York City New York, and Phoenix Arizona. We highlight how visioning of coherent future scenarios and the co-production process can link anticipatory knowledge and visions to action and enhance capacity in cities for long-term planning.

Knowledge of biofouling typical of marine structures is essential for engineers to define appropriate loading criteria in addition to informing other stakeholders about the ecological implications of creating novel artificial environments. There is a lack of information regarding biofouling community composition (including weight and density characteristics) on floating structures associated with future marine renewable energy generation technologies. A network of navigation buoys were identified across a range of geographical areas, environmental conditions (tidal flow speed, temperature and salinity), and deployment durations suitable for future developments. Despite the perceived importance of environmental and temporal factors, geographical location explained the greatest proportion of the observed variation in community composition, emphasising the importance of considering geography when assessing the impact of biofouling on device functioning and associated ecology. The principal taxa associated with variation in biofouling community composition were mussels (Mytilus edulis), which were also important when determining loading criteria.

Nonindigenous species (NIS) are those that have been intentionally or unintentionally introduced outside of their native range as a consequence of human activity. If these species then threaten indigenous species and biodiversity, and/or cause economic damage, they are referred to as "invasive." Biological invasions are not only one of the greatest threats to indigenous marine biodiversity, but they can also cause massive economic and ecological damage. Their presence could also lead to a water body failing to achieve good environmental status under the forthcoming EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive. As the rate of invasion to Great Britain and European waters continues to increase, particularly in light of climate change, the emphasis by member states is on prevention rather than on control or eradication an NIS once an invasive NIS has become established. This paper reviews NIS biosecurity planning for the marine environment, including the most current legislative background, pathway identification and highlights the main issues with the current risk assessment processes. The potential impacts of marine NIS, practical biosecurity measures from Great Britain and internationally are also reviewed. The aim of this paper is to draw attention to the challenges associated with preventing the introduction of marine NIS and to highlight the urgent need for concerted action across the EU member states and marine industries to produce robust biosecurity plans to protect indigenous species. Keywords: biosecurity, marine, non-indigenous invasive species, planning, indigenous, protection

Marine invasive non-native species (NNS) are one of the greatest threats to global marine biodiversity, causing significant economic and social impacts. Marinas are increasingly recognised as key reservoirs for invasive NNS. They provide submersed artificial habitat that unintentionally supports the establishment of NNS introduced from visiting recreational vessels. While ballast water and shipping vectors have been well documented, the role of recreational vessels in spreading NNS has been relatively poorly studied. Identification of the main physical features found within marinas, which relate to the presence of NNS, is important to inform the development of effective biosecurity measures and prevent further spread. Towards this aim, physical features that could influence the presence of NNS were assessed for marinas throughout the UK in July 2013. Thirty-three marine and brackish NNS have been recorded in UK marinas, and of the 88 marinas studied in detail, 83 contained between 1 and 13 NNS. Significant differences in freshwater input, marina entrance width and seawall length were associated with the presence of NNS. Additionally, questionnaires were distributed to marina managers and recreational vessel owners to understand current biosecurity practices and attitudes to recreational vessel biosecurity. The main barriers to biosecurity compliance were cited as cost and time. Further work identifying easily distinguished features of marinas could be used as a proxy to assess risk of invasion.

Land use science has traditionally used case-study approaches for in-depth investigation of land use change processes and impacts. Meta-studies synthesize findings across case-study evidence to identify general patterns. In this paper, we provide a review of meta-studies in land use science. Various meta-studies have been conducted, which synthesize deforestation and agricultural land use change processes, while other important changes, such as urbanization, wetland conversion, and grassland dynamics have hardly been addressed. Meta-studies of land use change impacts focus mostly on biodiversity and biogeochemical cycles, while meta-studies of socioeconomic consequences are rare. Land use change processes and land use change impacts are generally addressed in isolation, while only few studies considered trajectories of drivers through changes to their impacts and their potential feedbacks. We provide a conceptual framework for linking meta-studies of land use change processes and impacts for the analysis of coupled human–environmental systems. Moreover, we provide suggestions for combining meta-studies of different land use change processes to develop a more integrated theory of land use change, and for combining meta-studies of land use change impacts to identify tradeoffs between different impacts. Land use science can benefit from an improved conceptualization of land use change processes and their impacts, and from new methods that combine meta-study findings to advance our understanding of human–environmental systems.

Assessment of the ecological and economic/societal impacts of the introduction of non-indigenous species (NIS) is one of the primary focus areas of bioinvasion science in terrestrial and aquatic environments, and is considered essential to management. A classification system of NIS, based on the magnitude of their environmental impacts, was recently proposed to assist management. Here, we consider the potential application of this classification scheme to the marine environment, and offer a complementary framework focussing on value sets in order to explicitly address marine management concerns. Since existing data on marine NIS impacts are scarce and successful marine removals are rare, we propose that management of marine NIS adopt a precautionary approach, which not only would emphasise preventing new incursions through pre-border and at-border controls but also should influence the categorisation of impacts. The study of marine invasion impacts requires urgent attention and significant investment, since we lack the luxury of waiting for the knowledge base to be acquired before the window of opportunity closes for feasible management.

The Suez Canal is one of the most important waterways in the world – during the last year 17,148 ships passed through the Canal – reducing emissions, saving time, and operating costs to shippers. The rapid increase in ship size from the “Post-Suezmax” (> 12,000 TEU) to the latest container vessels (> 19,000 TEU) now requires enlargements of port facilities and canals. A project of this magnitude, and with potentially negative environmental outcomes, requires a transparent and scientifically sound “Environmental Impact Assessment” (EIA). An explicit obligation on Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (https://www.cbd.int/doc/ legal/cbd-en.pdf) was made to consider transboundary impacts on biodiversity, particularly those associated with invasive non-indigenous species. Although a nonbinding instrument, the “Rio Declaration on Environment and Development” sets forth important principles of international environmental law (UN 1992): States are responsible for ensuring that activities within their jurisdiction do not damage the environment of other States, and EIA, as a national instrument, shall be undertaken for proposed activities that are likely to have a significant adverse impact on the environment. To our knowledge, no Environmental Impact Assessment has been

‘‘Egypt to build new Suez canal... ‘This giant project will be the creation of a new Suez canal parallel to the current channel’ said Mohab Mamish, the chairman of the Suez Canal Authority, in a televised speech.’’ (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/05/ egypt-build-new-suez-canal, viewed August 13, 2014). This is ominous news. Expected to double the capacity of the Suez Canal, the expansion is sure to have a diverse range of effects, at local and regional scales, on both the biological diversity and the ecosystem goods and services of the Mediterranean Sea. Of nearly 700 multicellular non-indigenous species (NIS) currently recognized from the Mediterranean Sea, fully half were introduced through the Suez Canal since 1869 (Galil et al. 2014). This is one of the most potent mechanisms and corridors for invasions by marine species known in the world. Further, molecular methods demonstrate high levels of gene flow between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean populations