, 2005, Rodionova and Panov, 2006 and Janas and Zgrundo, 2007). Cladocera make up a significant part of the Baltic zooplankton both in numbers and in biomass, especially in summer. Since the early 1990s, the list of cladocerans has been extended by the Ponto-Caspian crustaceans Cercopagis pengoi, Cornigerius maeoticus and Evadne anonyx ( Ojaveer and Lumberg, 1995, Krylov et al., 1999, Panov et al., 1999, Rodionova et al., 2005 and Rodionova

and Panov, 2006). In the Polish coastal zone, and that includes the Gulf of Gdańsk, only C. pengoi has been recorded so far ( Bielecka et al., 2000, Duriš et al., Epacadostat manufacturer 2000, Bielecka et al., 2005, Olszewska, 2006 and Bielecka and Mudrak, 2010). Evadne anonyx is an endemic species from the Ponto-Caspian selleck inhibitor basin ( Mordukhai-Boltovskoi 1995). Its author classified it among the Caspian Polyphemoidae, which make up the Podonidae group. This marine species, originating from the tertiary period, occurs in shallow water plankton ( Mordukhai-Boltovskoi 1995). The environmental preferences of E. anonyx from the Caspian Sea were described by Aladin (1995), who stated that the salinity and temperature tolerance ranges for E. anonyx were from 4 to as much as 30 PSU and from 11.4 to 26.4° C respectively. That author found that this species, which used to be more

widespread, was forced to abandon the Aral Sea because of increasing salinity, and the Sea of Azov and Black Sea because of growing contamination. The first published report of E. anonyx

in the Baltic Sea, from the Gulf of Finland, related to August 2004 ( Litvinchuk 2005). According to Rodionova & Panov (2006), however, the first specimens of this species were found in the Primorsk oil terminal area in the Gulf of Finland four years earlier. This information was again corrected, this time by Põllupüü et al. (2008), who found that E. anonyx had been observed in the central Gulf of Finland (Tallinn Bay) as Liothyronine Sodium early as 1999. The aim of the present work was to report the first signs of the invasion of the Gulf of Gdańsk by E. anonyx G. O. Sars 1897 and to describe the extent of its range there in 2006. Plankton material was collected in the Gulf of Gdańsk from February to December 2006. The samples were taken from the eastern (Krynica Morska profile – K1–K4, Świbno profile – Sw2–Sw4) and western (Mechelinki station – M2, Sopot profile – So1–So4 and J23) parts of the gulf (Figure 1, Table 1). Hauls were made to a maximum depth of 40 m using a closing Copenhagen plankton net (mesh size 100 μm) from the vessel ‘Oceanograf 2’. The biological material was preserved in 4% formaldehyde solution. The overall zooplankton community analysis was done in the laboratory. All individuals of Evadne anonyx were separated according to the characteristics outlined by Rivier (1998): the number of setae on the exopodites of thoracic limbs I–IV – 2.2.2.1 respectively – and the rounded shape of the cauda.