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Publications (540)
Marine ecosystems are subject to global and local impacts, both contributing to dramatic changes in coastal communities. Assessing such changes requires time series or the revisitation of sites first surveyed in the past. In both cases, data are not necessarily collected by the same observers, which could lead to a bias in the results. In the Marin...
Seawater warming is affecting corals worldwide. Mass mortality events are increasingly frequent, and the bioconstruction potential of coral reefs is jeopardized. Revisiting sites surveyed in the past may represent a valuable tool to better understand the health state and ongoing trend of coral reefs. In the Mediterranean Sea the only reef-building...
Decapod crustaceans are important components of the fauna of marine caves worldwide, yet information on their ecology is still scarce. Mediterranean marine caves are perhaps the best known of the world and may offer paradigms to the students of marine cave decapods from other geographic regions. This review summarizes and updates the existing knowl...
Distribution and Ecology of Decapod Crustaceans in Mediterranean Marine Caves: A Review
Biodiversity is a portmanteau word to indicate the variety of life at all levels from genes to ecosystems, but it is often simplistically equated to species richness; the word ecodiversity has thus been coined to address habitat variety. Biodiversity represents the core of the natural capital, and as such needs to be quantified and followed over ti...
Biodiversity is a portmanteau word to indicate the variety of life at all levels from genes to ecosystems, but it is often simplistically equated to species richness; the word ecodiversity has thus been coined to address habitat variety. Biodiversity represents the core of the natural capital, and as such needs to be quantified and followed over ti...
Biotic indices are major tools recommended by the European Directives for assessing the ecological status of marine coastal ecosystems such as Posidonia oceanica meadows. Nevertheless, the multitude of available metrics commonly adopted in the P. oceanica monitoring often provide diverging responses about the health status of the habitat. In this s...
Posidonia oceanica is an endemic Mediterranean seagrass used as a ‘biological quality element’ in monitoring programmes of the EU Water Framework Directive, providing information about coastal ecosystems status. The regression of P. oceanica meadows caused a growing interest among policy makers to assess the value of seagrasses and to increase thei...
Marine caves are biodiversity reservoirs and refuge habitats, harbouring rare species and living fossils. The Mediterranean Sea hosts more than 3000 caves, which are among the most studied in the world. This review aims to synthesize and update knowledge of Mediterranean marine caves. Their biota includes few obligate cave-dwelling organisms, but m...
Gennaro P., Piazzi L., Cecchi E., Montefalcone M., Morri
C., Bianchi C.N. (Eds.), 2020. Monitoraggio e valutazione dello stato ecologico dell’habitat a
coralligeno. Il coralligeno di parete. ISPRA, Manuali e Linee Guida n.191/2020
Gennaro P., Piazzi L., Cecchi E.,
Montefalcone M., Morri C., Bianchi C.N. (Eds.), 2020. Monitoring and assessment of the ecological
status of coralligenous habitat. The coralligenous cliff. ISPRA, Manuali e Linee Guida n.191bis/2020
Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) have been proved to effectively protect and restore fish assemblages. There is mixed evidence regarding the effects of MPAs on benthic assemblages, habitat complexity, and how protection might mediate the effects of habitat features (including biotic and abiotic components) on fish assemblages, with very little informa...
Marine caves are biodiversity reservoirs and refuge habitats, harbouring rare species and living fossils. The Mediterranean Sea hosts more than 3000 caves, which are among the most studied in the world. This review aims to synthesize and update knowledge of Mediterranean marine caves. Their biota includes few obligate cave-dwelling organisms, but m...
Coralligenous reefs represent one of the key ecosystems of the Mediterranean Sea in terms of both species richness and habitat heterogeneity. Their main characteristic is the massive development of crustose macroalgae, the corallines, which form a bio-constructed basal layer. However, when growing on granitic substrates, these algae show a lower ca...
This paper aims at collating and reviewing all data collected using the ESCA (Ecological Status of Coralligenous Assemblages) index from 2009 to 2018 during different local applications, in order to evaluate at large spatial scale its effectiveness and temporal variability. To this scope, the large-scale response of ESCA to anthropogenic disturbanc...
• Detailed knowledge about the distribution of species in need of protection is required for the management of Marine Protected Areas, a major tool to reduce marine biodiversity loss. Such knowledge is deficient for most marine invertebrates.
• Axinella polypoides is a marine sponge included on the list of protected species by the Barcelona Convent...
Using the Conservation Index, which measures the proportional amount of dead matte relative to live Posidonia oceanica, we assessed the health of 15 P. oceanica meadows at a regional scale along the coast of Liguria (NW Mediterranean). These areas were characterized by different degrees of anthropization, from highly urbanized sites to marine prote...
Extreme environmental events can strongly affect coastal marine ecosystems but are typically unpredictable. Reliable data on benthic community conditions before such events are rarely available, making it difficult to measure their effects. At the end of October 2018, a severe storm hit the Ligurian coast (NW Mediterranean) producing damages to coa...
Extreme environmental events can strongly affect coastal marine ecosystems but are typically unpredictable. Reliable data on benthic community conditions before such events are rarely available, making it difficult to measure their effects. At the end of October 2018, a severe storm hit the Ligurian coast (NW Mediterranean) producing damages to coa...
Making nature's value visible to humans is a key issue for the XXI century and it is crucial to identify and measure natural capital to incorporate benefits or costs of changes in ecosystem services into policy. Emergy analysis, a method able to analyze the overall functioning of a system, was applied to reckon the value of main ecosystem services...
Two severe heat waves triggered coral bleaching and mass mortality in the Maldives in 1998 and 2016. Analysis of live coral cover data from 1997 to 2019 in shallow (5 m depth) reefs of the Maldives showed that the 1998 heat wave caused more than 90% of coral mortality leaving only 6.8 ± 0.3% of survived corals in all the shallow reefs investigated....
Two severe heat waves triggered coral bleaching and mass mortality in the Maldives in 1998 and 2016. Analysis of live coral cover data from 1997 to 2019 in shallow (5 m depth) reefs of the Maldives showed that the 1998 heat wave caused more than 90% of coral mortality leaving only 6.8 ± 0.3% of survived corals in all the shallow reefs investigated....
Marine coastal ecosystems are facing structural and functional changes due to the increasing human footprint worldwide, and the assessment of their long-term changes becomes particularly challenging. Measures of change can be done by comparing the observed ecosystem status to a purposely defined reference condition. In this paper, a geospatial mode...
RIASSUNTO I prelievi di macrobenthos sono stati effettuati con benna Van Veen in 65 stazioni tra 5 e 490 m di profondità, su diversi tipi di fondale. In totale, sono state rinvenute complessivamente 605 specie ap partenenti a 17 maggiori taxa; sulla base dei dati di letteratu ra le specie sono state classificate in gruppi ecologici. Vengono individ...
Good datasets of geo-referenced records of alien species are a prerequisite for assessing the spatio-temporal dynamics of biological invasions, their invasive potential, and the magnitude of their impacts. However, with the exception of first records on a country level or wider regions, observations of species presence tend to remain unpublished, b...
European legislation requires the development of monitoring and assessment plans based on standardized methods, in order to allow the comparability of results on a wide spatial and time scale. These plans must also be based on the best available technical-scientific knowledge, which evolution is considered a fundamental basis for the periodic updat...
This paper-the first of a series-discusses the current situation of three important aspects of the evaluation of science: the selection of referees, the rating procedures for the impact factor, and the rating procedures for the citation index. Despite new developments and attitudes around open publishing and using web facilities in communication pr...
Anthropogenic pressure on marine ecosystems is affecting water quality and seafloor integrity. Mediterranean seagrass meadows of endemic Posidonia oceanica (Linnaeus) Delile are considered a priority habitat under the European Directive 92/43/CEE, given their
ecological and economic importance and being an environmental quality indicator. Availabil...
Understanding which drivers cause diversity patterns is a key issue in conservation. Here we applied a spatially explicit model to predict marine benthic diversity patterns according to environmental factors in the NW Mediterranean Sea. While most conservation-oriented diversity studies consider species richness only and neglect equitability, we me...
![Fig 2. Schematic drawing of the acoustic unit (from [17]).](publication/337779606/figure/fig2/AS:832924593176578@1575596106609/Schematic-drawing-of-the-acoustic-unit-from-17_Q320.jpg)
This study investigates the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus, Montagu 1821) habitat use in the Portofino marine protected area (NW Italy) and adjacent waters, a core area for the dolphins and a highly touristic area in the Mediterranean Sea. A permanent automated real-time passive acoustic monitoring system, able to detect and track dolphins...
A rapid temperature increase in the 1980-90s has been accompanied by dramatic and unprecedented changes in the biota and communities of the Ligurian Sea. This review uses existing historical series (a few of which have been purposely updated) to assess extent and consequences of such changes. A number of warm-water species, previously absent or occ...
Seawater warming is impacting marine ecosystems, but proper evaluation of change requires the availability of long-term biological data series. Mesco Reef (Ligurian Sea, Italy) offers one of the longest Mediterranean data series on sessile epibenthic communities, based on underwater photographic surveys. Photographs taken in four stations between 2...
Posidonia oceanica (L.) Delile is an endemic Mediterranean seagrass and a key species of coastal marine ecosystems listed among the priority habitats in the European Directive 92/43 / EEC. P. oceanica is a good biological indicator to define the quality of coastal marine ecosystem, because its high sensitivity to environmental conditions changes. T...
The global increase in seawater temperature is causing irreparable damages to coral reefs all over the world. Frequency of coral bleaching episodes and mass mortality is increasing and coral reefs have not enough time to recover after these impacts. The present study concerns this phenomenon in the context of the Maldives. In this scenario, monitor...
Biotic homogenization is an expected effect of biological invasions. Invasive alien species typically show great adaptability to a wide range of environmental conditions and may expand into different habitats, thus reducing the dissimilarity among the recipient communities. We tested this assumption by analyzing a comprehensive database (78 species...
Temperate mesophotic reefs (circalittoral and offshore circalittoral hard/firm habitats), host complex three-dimensional animal forests and are vulnerable habitats protected by international agreements. In order to evaluate and monitor the environmental status of these ecosystems, the multi-parametric index Mesophotic Assemblages Conservation Statu...
The ecological management effectiveness (EME) of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) is the degree to which MPAs reach their ecological goals. The significant variability of EME among MPAs has been partly explained by MPA design, management and implementation features (e.g. surface area, enforcement, age of protection). We investigated EME variability by...
Marine caves are unique and vulnerable habitats exhibiting high biodiversity and heterogeneity, but threatened by multiple global and local disturbances. Marine caves, although widely distributed along the Mediterranean coast, suffer for the lack of quantitative data on their structure and function, which hinder their conservation status assessment...
• Coralligenous reefs represent one of the most important coastal ecosystems of the Mediterranean Sea, and their ecological quality must be assessed under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive to evaluate seafloor integrity. An effective standardized monitoring protocol is urgently needed in order to compare data at the Mediterranean scale and to...
danni alle praterie di posidonie causati dalla mareggiata di ottobre 2018
Landscape ecology investigates spatial patterns of natural and anthro-pogenic ecosystems (anthromes). However, most studies were focused on terrestrial environment, while submarine landscape (seascape) was poorly taken into account. This study represents a first attempt to perform an integrated landscape/seascape spatial analysis of the densely pop...
Posidonia oceanica (L.) Delile is an ideal biological indicator to define environmental quality. Due to the high urbanization of the coast, the P. oceanica meadows of Liguria are in decline. We assessed the health status of 13 P. oceanica meadows using ecological descriptors at different complexity levels (i.e. species, population, community, and s...
The methods used to study shallow coralligenous reefs are reviewed to select a unified procedure able to optimize sampling effort, to select the most effective ecological descriptors to evaluate the responses of coralligenous assemblages to anthropogenic pressures and to synthesize available information in an integrated and standardized procedure n...
Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are important tools to achieve marine conservation and resources management goals. The management effectiveness of MPAs (the degree to which MPAs achieve their goals) is highly variable and can be affected by many MPA attributes, for example their design, enforcement and age. Another key factor possibly affecting MPA m...
Shallow hydrothermal vents emit warm water, carbon dioxide, toxic chemicals, nutrients and reduced compounds that altogether mimic climate and human impacts, and are therefore considered as 'natural laboratories' at which can be investigated the effects of these stressors on marine ecosystems. One of the effects more thoroughly investigated is the...
The availability of marine habitats maps remains limited due to difficulty and cost of working at sea. Reduced light penetration in the water hampers the use of optical imagery, and acoustic methods require extensive sea-truth activities. Predictive spatial modelling may offer an alternative to produce benthic habitat maps based on complete acousti...
Hard bottom Sessile macrobenthos Algal cover Infralittoral rocky reefs Mediterranean sea A B S T R A C T Unlike the soft bottom meiofauna, meiofauna associated to hard substrata is poorly studied, despite its ecological relevance. Since communities of hard substrata are usually characterized by species with different life cycles and strategies from...
Marine coastal ecosystems are facing structural and functional changes due to the increasing human footprint worldwide, and the assessment of their long-term changes becomes particularly challenging. Measures of change can be done by comparing the observed ecosystem status to a purposely defined reference condition. In this paper, a geospatial mode...
Marine caves are unique and vulnerable habitats exhibiting high biodiversity and heterogeneity, but threatened by multiple global and local disturbances. Marine caves, although widely distributed along the Mediterranean coast, suffer for the lack of quantitative data on their structure and function, which hinder their conservation status assessment...
Global warming is facilitating the poleward range expansion of plant and animal species. In the Mediterranean Sea, the concurrent temperature increase and abundance of (sub)tropical non-indigenous species (NIS) is leading to the so-called 'tropi-calization' of the Mediterranean Sea, which is dramatically evident in the southeastern sectors of the b...
Global climate change has increased the frequency and intensity of extreme heat anomalies and consequent mass coral bleaching events. Long term dynamics of hard coral cover, bioconstruction potential, carbonate deposition, and reef accretion were monitored over a 20‐year period on Maldivian coral reefs in order to investigate the effects of high‐te...
Marine bioconstructions are biodiversity-rich, three-dimensional biogenic structures, regulating key ecological functions of benthic ecosystems worldwide. Tropical coral reefs are outstanding for their beauty, diversity and complexity, but analogous types of bioconstructions are also present in temperate seas. The main bioconstructions in the Medit...
Marine bioconstructions are biodiversity-rich, three-dimensional biogenic structures, regulating key ecological functions of benthic ecosystems worldwide. Tropical coral reefs are outstanding for their beauty, diversity and complexity, but analogous types of bioconstructions are also present in temperate seas. The main bioconstructions in the Medit...
• Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are a major tool to conserve marine ecosystems but are also strongly attractive to tourists, the increased numbers of which can cause environmental issues if not properly managed.
• Proposing an MPA and then failing to establish it risks advertising the beauty of a marine area without managing the unavoidable increas...
Dark marine habitats are often characterized by a food-limited condition. Peculiar dark habitats include marine caves, characterized by the absence of light and limited water flow, which lead to reduced fluxes of organic matter for cave-dwelling organisms. We investigated whether the most abundant and common cave-dwelling fish Apogon imberbis has t...
Sea-level changes have shaped the world's carbonate platform margins and continental shelves, leaving typical geomorphic imprints, such as drowned reef terraces. In this paper, we present the results of 112 scuba diving transects across seven different Maldivian atolls and one multibeam survey around Malé Island, the capital of Maldives. We report...
Sea-level changes have shaped the world's carbonate platform margins and continental shelves, leaving typical geomorphic imprints, such as drowned reef terraces. In this paper, we present the results of 112 scuba diving transects across seven different Maldivian atolls and one multibeam survey around Malé Island, the capital of Maldives. We report...
