Alessandro Bellino

Università degli Studi di Salerno | UNISA · Department of Chemistry and Biology DCB

The exposure of plants to weak magnetic fields (MFs) of various intensities and for different times is increasingly adopted to sustainably enhance plant growth in plant-based applications such as modern agriculture, phytoremediation and biogas production. However, little is known about the effects of MF exposure on plant chemical composition, and i...

Carnivorous plants typify a mixotrophic strategy where autotrophy is supported by predation on animals, achieved through fascinating morpho-physiological adaptations and unique mutualisms. Exploring such symbiotic interactions is pivotal to understand how carnivorous plants feed upon wide ranges of resources, by relying on symbiont-mediated digesti...

In cave ecosystems tourists represent moving sources of discontinuous disturbances, able to induce transient system responses whose knowledge is crucial in defining appropriate conservation measures. Here we propose an approach to evaluate the amplitude and scales of cave alterations based on high-resolution air monitoring, through the use of purpo...

Anthropogenic pressures can affect the distribution of species and elicit the appearance of spatial patterns that provide insights into the species’ responses to environmental filtering, mediated by their functional traits. Due to the functional redundancy in ecological communities, the spatial variations of species and functional traits can occur...

Evaluating the relative weight of the choice of cultivar and soil fertilization on potentially toxic elements (PTEs) accumulation is crucial in promoting informed decisions in the framework of regenerative agriculture. To this end, 11 PTEs (Cd, Cr, Cu, Fe, K, Mg, Mn, Na, Ni, Pb, Zn) were determined in both leaves and roots of six cultivars (Stylist...

With a view of shedding light on the accumulation capability of the epigeous organs of common reed (Phragmites australis), employed worldwide in metal biomonitoring, an accumulation study of Cd, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, Pb and Zn was performed, focusing on leaves belonging to different whorls and culms. To this end, in five sampling sites on the littora...

There are several factors to make the organisers of this event hopeful, now is exactly the right time to consider future chemical water monitoring. From the aquatic chemistry side, long-term trends in concentrations in many rivers in Central Europe are declining for most classical pollutants (e.g. metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and nutrie...

At the core of the adaptive ecosystem management paradigm, environmental monitoring, especially using biomonitors, mandates the search for tools and approaches to overcome its current limitations, both in terms of novel species and analytical techniques to extract information from the data. In this context, a large field biomonitoring study was per...

In statistics, the identification of environmental criticalities, one of the primary goals of environmental monitoring and management, translates into the detection of spatial outliers. Detected in relation to purposely defined sets of indicators, both global and local outliers are pivotal in the identification not only of the severity and spread o...

Environmental monitoring in sensitive areas is crucial to develop and adapt governance policies. In this context, biomonitoring provides information not only on environmental contamination gradients, but also on the actual pollutant bioavailabilities and, using bioaccumulators, on their possible transfer through the food webs. The spatial distribut...

Copper is an essential element for all living organisms however, it becomes toxic at high concentrations due to its ability to participate in many redox reactions. This vital micronutrient balance plays an important role in the battle between host and pathogen, due to its use by the host to intoxicate pathogens. In this study, we explore the effect...

Microbial degradation is the main responsible for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) removal from contaminated soils, and the understanding of this process is pivotal to define effective bioremediation approaches. To evaluate the contribution of several microbial groups in soil anthracene and benzo[a]pyrene degradation, the analysis of phospho...

Aim Understanding and quantifying the seasonal patterns in biodiversity of phytobenthos, macro‐zoobenthos and fishes in Mediterranean coastal lagoons, and the species dependence upon environmental factors. Location The study was carried out in the “Stagnone di Marsala e Saline di Trapani e Paceco,” the largest coastal lagoon system in the central...

Caves constitute fascinating ecological niches for microorganisms, among which the chemolithoautotrophic constitute the main primary producers of these ecosystems. The role of cave microbiota in the formation of speleothems and other structures like vermiculations is still debated. Vermiculations are enigmatic deposits of incoherent particles, obse...

Unlike the spectacular speleothems that can often be found in numerous caves, vermiculations are rather un-assuming formations, whose origin and evolution still subject of several heated debates. In order to provide a quantitative basis for the understanding of the nature and evolution of vermiculations in karst environments, the geochemical proper...

Vermiculations are little known structures occurring in underground environments. They are thin, irregular and discontinuous deposits of incoherent particles, with diverse morphology (dots, dendritic, hieroglyphic…), colour (red, brownish, grey, white…) and size (1), typically found on walls and roofs of natural or artificial caves all over the wor...

By increasing landscape patchiness and habitat loss, urbanization threatens biodiversity. Its adverse effects may be mitigated by urban parks, in which conditions that promote structural and functional biodiversity contribute to preserve ecosystem processes. Therefore, deep knowledge of urban park biodiversity and of patterns driving species assemb...

Caves are largely unknown environments, hosting in their peculiar ecological niches a wide diversity of extremophile microorganisms, highly specialized and adapted to the prohibitive conditions of caves (1). The role of cave biota in the formation of enigmatic structures occurring in underground environments, like vermiculations, is still largely u...

The Sarno River is considered the most polluted river in Europe and one of the ten most polluted rivers in the world. So far, its quality has been usually evaluated by water and sediment analyses of either inorganic or organic pollutants. However, a biomonitoring approach would be of paramount importance in the evaluation of river quality, since it...

Antibiotics are emerging pollutants released into the environment through wastewater and manure or effluents from livestock plants. Compared to the wide literature on the effects of antibiotics on the development of drug-resistant bacteria and on the adverse effects on animals and human beings, the effects on plants are less investigated. Here we e...

Urban parks provide esthetic and recreational services and improve the quality of life in cities. Sometimes considered as biodiversity hot-spots in cities, they are subjected to different management practices which may affect soil biological quality. This is the first study - performed in urban parks of Naples (southern Italy) - aiming to evaluate...

Post-fire reproductive niche of Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis) is deeply interlaced with fire products. Indeed, the high pH and low osmotic potentials of ash beds under burnt crowns constitute the main constraints to seed germination. In this study, we aim to investigate whether fire recurrence, through the physico-chemical constraints imposed by t...

In order to validate the use of compost in soil PAH bioremediation, the degradation of anthracene and benzo(a)pyrene was monitored in soils artificially contaminated and incubated in mesocosms under controlled conditions. The dynamics observed in compost amended soil were compared to those observed in soil added with a fungal consortium and untreat...

Background: Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is one of the most important vegetables in the world and represents a key crop in southern Italy. With the aim to evaluate the nutritional characteristics of tomato fruits in relation to NPK and compost fertilization, the concentrations of the main nutrients, toxic elements, primary metabolites and tota...

Phylogeographical scenario for the diversification of the Soldanella genus during the Pleistocene.

Figure S1. Abaxial (left) and adaxial (right) side of the leaves of Soldanella sacra. Figure S2. (a) stalked glandular hair of leaf petioles, (b) stalked glandular hair of pedicels and (c) non-stalked glandular hair of the adaxial side of calyx lobes. Glandular hairs in (c) are morphologically similar to the non-stalked glandular hairs of leaf pet...

Background: The populations of Soldanella (Primulaceae) of the southern Apennines (Italy) are unique within the genus for their distribution and ecology. Their highly fragmented distribution range, with three main metapopulations on some of the highest mountains (Gelbison, Sila and Aspromonte massifs) of the area, poses intriguing questions about t...

Chemometric analysis applied to diffuse reflectance spectroscopy is increasingly proposed as an effective and accurate methodology to predict soil physical, chemical and biological properties. Its effectiveness, however, largely varies in relation to the calibration techniques and the specific soil properties. In addition, the calibration of UV-Vis...

A vegetation analysis was carried out on a degraded agricultural soil of the Mediterranean area (Campania region, southern Italy) in order to study the effects of different fertilization practices (quality compost, mineral fertilizers, mixed fertilization, and no fertilization) on the whole spontaneous vegetation community. The study was performed...

Partially mycoheterotrophic (mixotrophic) plants gain carbon from both photosynthesis and their mycorrhizal fungi. This is considered an ancestral state in the evolution of full mycoheterotrophy, but little is known about this nutrition, and especially about the physiological balance between photosynthesis and fungal C gain. To investigate possible...

Compost use is increasingly proposed as a sustainable strategy to restore the fertility of degraded agricultural soils and to reduce landfill disposal or incineration of organic wastes. The effects of compost application on many soil physico-chemical and biological properties, as well as on soil contamination, have been investigated widely, but a m...

Context The evaluation of changes in litter decomposition rate due to increasing trend in tropospheric ozone is an emerging field of investigation, providing relevant information on long-term forest ecosystem sustainability. Aims This research aims to clarify the effects of ozone exposure on Quercus ilex leaf chemical composition and decomposition...

In this study, the phytoextraction capacity of a heavy metal tolerant white poplar clone, grown in the presence of high iron availability and/or mycorrhizas was evaluated. A large amount of iron in available form was determined in initial high concentrations in leaf, which declined along time and affected Cd, Cu, Pb and Zn accumulation. Natural and...