ORIGINAL PAPER A tale of two invaders: divergent spreading kinetics of the alien green algae Caulerpa taxifolia and Caulerpa cylindracea Monica Montefalcone . Carla Morri . Valeriano Parravicini . Carlo Nike Bianchi Received: 13 November 2014 / Accepted: 16 May 2015 / Published online: 26 May 2015 Ó Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 Abstract The two alien green algae Caulerpa taxifolia and Caulerpa cylindracea (formerly Cauler- pa racemosa var. cylindracea) are among the most notorious and threatening invasive species in the Mediterranean Sea. From the beginning of their introduction, C. taxifolia aroused a great concern due to its initial exponential spread and impacts on native ecosystems, whilst C. cylindracea received lower attention. In this paper, the distribution of the two aliens over the last 30 years in the Italian side of the Ligurian Sea (NW Mediterranean Sea) is reviewed and the kinetics of their spreading is compared. We combined available data on habitat occupancy with data on substratum cover obtained during underwater surveys to compute the average annual spreading rates for both aliens. C. taxifolia had an impressive expan- sion phase from 1984 to 2000 but then, its dispersal rate showed lower than that predicted and the species did not persist in areas formerly colonized. Today, abundance of this species is strongly declined as it disappeared from most of the attained areas. On the contrary, C. cylindracea exhibited an impressive and constant expansion from the beginning of its first appearance in the Ligurian Sea and, today, it is still increasing its range and habitat occupancy. Its abun- dance results 1.5-times greater than that reached by C. taxifolia during the period of its maximum expan- sion. The divergent kinetics of spreading of the two aliens prevents any possibility of generalization of the future behaviour of invasive species in the Mediter- ranean Sea: continuous and periodic surveys are thus mandatory to understand the kinetics of expansion and to define species-specific models. Keywords Caulerpa taxifolia Á Caulerpa cylindracea Á Bioinvasion Á Kinetics of spreading Á Ligurian Sea Á Mediterranean Sea Introduction The incessant increase of human footprint and climate change favoured invasion by non-indigenous species (hereafter NIS) introduced by human activities world- wide (Occhipinti-Ambrogi 2007; Jauni et al. 2015). Invasive NIS are recognized as one of the major drivers of biodiversity change across the globe and Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10530-015-0908-1) contains supple- mentary material, which is available to authorized users. M. Montefalcone (&) Á C. Morri Á C. N. Bianchi DiSTAV, Department of Earth, Environment and Life Sciences, University of Genoa, Corso Europa 26, 16132 Genoa, Italy e-mail: montefalcone@dipteris.unige.it V. Parravicini CRIOBE, USR 3278 CNRS-EPHE-UPVD, LABEX Corail, University of Perpignan, 66860 Perpignan, France 123 Biol Invasions (2015) 17:2717–2728 DOI 10.1007/s10530-015-0908-1