User talk:MA1793

Hi! Thanks for your contributions to WP and in particular those about tropical fish. There is a lot of space for improvement across these articles.

However, I am a bit concerned about some of your edits - they are very similar and are all adding links to pages from the same book source. In particular, single findings of a fish in a location they do not appear to be local to is not really a notable piece of information where the article is discussing the normal distribution of the fish. In addition, some of your edits are disrupting the normal formatting of the previous text.

Please can you be a little more selective with your edits, and introduce new material in the flow of the normal text. Thanks |→ Spaully ~talk~ 09:46, 23 November 2022 (UTC)


 * Hi SPaully! Thank you for your attention.
 * You have a point: as a professional marine biologist I agree that records based on one specimen are not necessarily a marker of "normal" distribution of the species. Yet they may often signal a future invasion (see the case of Fistularia commersonni) and are interesting as such. I will apply case by case selectivity in the future.
 * On the issue of the reference to the Mediterranean Atlas, please note that this volume based on the latest scientific records is the authoritative expert source for exotic fishes in Mediterranean - such as Fishbase for the World Ocean. MA1793 (talk) 10:37, 23 November 2022 (UTC)


 * Hi MA1793, yes I can see that it has relevance for species invasion or transportation of animals within ships/bilges etc., but the language you have used to insert them into some articles might lead readers to interpret that the natural range is extending. Fistularia commersonni is an interesting example of where this is clearly notable, which is nicely explained in the article also. Thanks for being more judicious for inclusion, and for not including it in the lead of a large article such as Atlantic cod. |→ Spaully ~talk~ 10:58, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Lessepsian migration
I note that in your edits to Lesspesian migrant species to the Mediterranean you appear to be deleting mentions of Lessepsian migration. Why is that? Quetzal1964 (talk) 17:34, 23 November 2022 (UTC)


 * Hi Quetzal196 - That is is a good question, thanks.  Specialists of exotic introductions in the Mediterranean tend to reserve the term 'Lessepsian migrant' to clear cases of actual swimming, south to north, through the Suez Canal. The simple presence of an Indo-Pacific species in the Mediterranean Sea is no proof at all of that.  Often there are legitimate doubts that there was another mode of introduction  (like transfer in the ballast water of a ship; or deliberate attempts to raise a species with high commercial value in aquaculture; or even passage via Gibraltar if the species is also present in the tropical Atlantic.  Therefore caution is always required. MA1793 (talk) 10:50, 24 November 2022 (UTC)


 * I did not think active swimming had to be involved to classify a species as a Lessepsian migrant, bivalves are thought to have entered the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal as planktonic eggs or larvae. If a species has a range extending to the northern Gulf of Suez and was first identified in the Mediterranean in the Levantine Sea, especially off Egypt or the Levant, is it not more likely that they are Lessepsian migrants? I agree that the term is not appropriate for Atlantic species entering through the Straits of Gibraltar, fouling organisms, species imported in ballast water or artificial releases. Quetzal1964 (talk) 15:50, 24 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I think we both agree as I do also include (but did not explicitly mention here) larval /eggs dispersal among potential migrants. In the case of exotic fishes we are careful with the terminology due to increasing ship traffic, oil platform associated imports, deliberate or accidental release from mariculture or aquaria, etc. MA1793 (talk) 16:06, 24 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I also disagree with removing Lessepsian migration. In the case of Tetrosomus gibbosus a WP:SECONDARY source uses that term. Especially in such cases. Invasive Spices (talk) 19:20, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

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