Hemimysis anomala

Hemimysis anomala
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Subphylum:	Crustacea
Class:	Malacostraca
Order:	Mysida
Family:	Mysidae
Genus:	Hemimysis
Species:	H. anomala
Binomial name
Hemimysis anomala G. O. Sars, 1907

External identifiers for Hemimysis anomala
Encyclopedia of Life	1037080
ITIS	90568
NCBI	236576
WoRMS	120025

The bloody-red mysid, Hemimysis anomala, is a shrimp-like crustacean in the Mysida order, native to the Ponto-Caspian region, which has been spreading across Europe since the 1950s. In 2006, it was discovered to have invaded the North American Great Lakes.

The species is native to freshwater margins of the Black Sea, the Azov Sea and the eastern Caspian Sea. It has historically occurred in the lower reaches of the Don, Danube, Dnieper and Dniester rivers. In Europe, it has recently spread north west, reaching the Baltic Sea in 1992 and the United Kingdom in 2004. The mysid's spread has been facilitated via its deliberate introduction into reservoirs on the Volga and Dnieper rivers in the 1950s and 1960s to serve as fish food. Despite its spread throughout Europe, it is considered to be endangered in some parts of its indigenous range (Ukraine).

The species has entered the Great Lakes via the ballast water exchange; it was reported for the first time in 2006 from two disjunct regions: southeastern Lake Ontario at Nine Mile Point near Oswego, New York in May 2006, and from a channel connecting Muskegon Lake to Lake Michigan in November 2006. Specimens resembling H. anomala have also been found in the stomach contents of a white perch collected near Port Dover, Lake Erie in August 2006. The species was discovered in the Saint Lawrence River in July 2008; it is now found in all the major Great Lakes waterbodies, except for Lake Superior.

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