Gioele Capillo

University of Messina | UNIME · Dipartimento di Scienze Veterinarie

Cnidarians are the first phylum of metazoans to exhibit a functional mucus layer. In evolution, mucous cells perform the classical secretory function of mucus and act as sentinels for external insults, particularly in mammals. However, this topic has not been much analysed in the lower metazoans. This study aims to investigate the role of mucous ce...

One of the most crucial biological indicators in tracking long-term variations in the reproductive cycle is sexual development. Scorpaena porcus (Linnaeus, 1758), commonly known as the black scorpionfish, is a small teleost from the family Scorpaenidae. Much is known about its ecology, but data on its reproductive and defense systems are still lack...

Citation: Zaccone, G.; Mokhtar, D.M.; Alesci, A.; Capillo, G.; Albano, M.; Hussein, M.T.; Aragona, M.; Germanà, A.; Lauriano, E.R.; Sayed, R.K.A. From (M.A.) † These authors contributed equally to this work. Abstract: Unlike adult mammalian cardiomyocytes, cardiomyocytes in teleosts display high prolifer-ative capacity throughout adulthood. This st...

Citation: Zaccone, G.; Mokhtar, D.M.; Alesci, A.; Capillo, G.; Albano, M.; Hussein, M.T.; Aragona, M.; Germanà, A.; Lauriano, E.R.; Sayed, R.K.A. From (M.A.) † These authors contributed equally to this work. Abstract: Unlike adult mammalian cardiomyocytes, cardiomyocytes in teleosts display high prolifer-ative capacity throughout adulthood. This st...

In recent decades, otoliths have proven to be of great scientific value in research dealing with teleost fishes' ecology, zoology, and physiology. Due to their high intra-and inter-specific variability, metabolic inertia, and growing process in daily increments of carbonate deposition, they have attracted increasing interest in population studies,...

Improve the knowledge base on the ecomorphological adaptation of teleost species to different environments, trying to reconstruct how habitat can shape sagittae, is essential for conservational purposes, evolutionary evaluations, and population dynamics studies. Here is provided a comparative study between sagittae features, growth rates and age co...

The garfish Belone belone represents the only valid endemic Belone species for the Mediterranean Sea and the eastern Atlantic Ocean. It shows a wide global distribution range, with a high commercial value and ecological relevance in the pelagic domain. Despite this, there needs to be more knowledge regarding the otoliths of this species, with the t...

Microplastics are pervasive and ubiquitous environmental pollutants to which all living organisms are inevitably exposed. The connection between microplastic pollution and climate change is, yet, largely unexplored. Herein, we examine the interconnectedness between microplastics and climate change; the evidence for potential combined impacts on bot...

The shell of bivalves acts as structural support, defence against predators, stressors, and maintenance of homeostasis. Haemocytes and mantle epithelial cells participate in shell formation. Mantle epithelial cells produce the organic matrix of the shell and are associated with biomineralization because of their proximity to the shell surface and a...

Ciliated and non‐ciliated mechanosensory cells in invertebrates have intricate cytoskeletal structures that, combined with microtubules, act as a mechanical link between external stimulus and signal processing. As a result, they can perceive forces like touch, cuticle deformation, gravity and sound. Through the expression of antibodies against sero...

The internal defense system of mollusks represents an efficient protection against pathogens and parasites, involving several biological immune processes, such as phagocytosis, encapsulation, cytotoxicity, and antigenic recognition of self/non-self. Mollusks possess professional, migratory, and circulating cells that play a key role in the defense...

The integument acts as a barrier to protect the body from harmful pathogenic infectious agents, parasites, UV rays, trauma, and germs. The integument of invertebrates and vertebrates are structurally different: while invertebrates usually have a simple monolayer epidermis frequently covered by mucus, cuticles, or mineralized structures, vertebrates...

Metazoans have several mechanisms of internal defense for their survival. The internal defense system evolved alongside the organisms. Annelidae have circulating coelomocytes that perform functions comparable to the phagocytic immune cells of vertebrates. Several studies have shown that these cells are involved in phagocytosis, opsonization, and pa...

Mesopelagic species are enjoining increasing attention due to the growing impact of fisheries activities on deep marine biocenosis. Improving the knowledge base on mesopelagic species is required to enhance their conservation due to the knowledge gaps regarding many species and families. In this context, otoliths can be fundamental to assessing the...

The recognition and elimination of invading pathogens are vital for host survival. Macrophages play a central role in host protection and cells functionally reminiscent of vertebrate macrophages are present in all multicellular organisms. A pattern responsible for bacterial recognition found on the surface of macrophages is CD14. These cells posses...

The survey of available scientific literature shows a lack of data on the chronic effects of tebuconazole (TEB) on nontarget aquatic organisms. Therefore, this study evaluates toxicity (10 and 20 days) of two considered concentrations 2 ng/L (E1) and 2 μg/L (E2) of TEB to bioindicator species Mytilus galloprovincialis. To this end, the TEB concentr...

The integument acts as a barrier to protect the body from harmful pathogenic infectious agents, parasites, UV rays, trauma, and germs. The integument of invertebrates and vertebrates are structurally different: while invertebrates usually have a simple monolayer epidermis frequently covered by mucus, cuticles, or mineralized structures, vertebrates...

Mucus secretion provides an interface with unique and multifunctional properties between the epithelial cells of many aquatic organisms and their surrounding environment. Indeed, mucus is involved in various essential biological processes including feeding, reproduction, osmoregulation, competition for space, defense against pathogens, xenobiotics,...

This Collective Article presents information on 20 taxa belonging to five (5) Phyla: Cnidaria (2), Mollusca (8), Arthropoda (4), Echinodermata (1) and Chordata (5) recorded from the Alboran Sea to the Levantine Sea. These new records were found in seven (7) different ecoregions as follows: Alboran Sea: new record of the rare football octopus Ocytho...

The immune system of a fish has cellular and molecular defense mechanisms that are substantially retained throughout the evolution of vertebrates. The innate immune system provides biological processes, such as phagocytosis and mechanical barriers, to implement an efficient defensive response after exposure to chemical or biological contaminants, p...

The amphibious teleost Giant mudskipper (Periophthalmodon schlosseri, Pallas 1770) inhabit muddy plains and Asian mangrove forests. It spends more than 90% of its life outside of the water, using its skin, gills, and buccal-pharyngeal cavity mucosa to breathe in oxygen from the surrounding air. All vertebrates have been found to have mast cells (MC...

Deep Sea environments represent the final collector of anthropogenic debris mainly represented by both plastic and non-plastic materials with different size. This led to potential contamination of deep marine fauna due to direct and indirect ingestion, representing a potential hazard for the species itself and for the final consumer. In this framew...

Monitoring the occurrence and distribution of rare fish species is essential, especially in a semi-closed basin such as the Mediterranean Sea. Biologically interesting species often represent fishing waste (being part of the by-catch) and therefore are not retained, leading to a huge gap in data collection. Here we report about the occurrence in th...

Lampriformes are circumglobally distributed and contain several families of strictly marine bony fishes that have a peculiar morphology. Lampriformes systematics is affected by limitations in biometric, meristic, and molecular data; for this reason, it underwent several rearrangements in the past. This review aimed to describe the biological and ec...

We have conducted a morphological and immunohistochemical study of the gills of juvenile specimens of the obligate air-breathing fish Heterotis niloticus. The study has been performed under normoxic and hypoxic conditions. The gills showed a reduced respiratory surface area by development of an interlamellar cellular mass (ILCM). The ILCM persisted...

The fish intestine operates as a complicated interface between the organism and the environment, providing biological and mechanical protections as a result of a viscous layer of mucus released by goblet cells, which serves as a barrier against bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens, and contributes to the functions of the immune system. Therefore,...

Abstract Tebuconazole (TEB) [(RS)-1-p-chlorophenyl-4,4-dimethyl-3-(1H-1,2,4-triazol-1-ylmethyl) pentan-3-ol] is an enantioselective chiral azole pesticide considered to have low toxicity. Residual concentrations, however, can induce detrimental effects on the physiological processes of aquatic organisms. Marine invertebrates such as Mytilus gallopr...

Pharmaceutical products are largely used by humans, making them commonly found in the environment, especially the aquatic ones. The presence and the increasing concentration represent a risk for non-target organisms and humans too because many of these species enter the human food chain. At the top of the list of medicine and anti-inflammatory drug...

Plastic pollution is increasing dramatically worldwide, causing adverse effects on a wide variety of marine organisms at all trophic levels. As predators, sharks play a key role in marine ecosystems and they could especially be threatened by the ingestion of microplastics. This study contributes to expand the existing data on the MPs ingestion by a...

Merluccius merluccius is one of the most important Mediterranean benthopelagic predators. It represents a key species for the ecosystem’s functioning due to its fundamental role in the energy transferal between different domains and depth strata. The aim of this study was to explore the feeding habits of European hakes in the southern and central M...

Dendritic cells (DCs) are antigen-presenting cells (APCs) that regulate the beginning of adaptive immune responses. The mechanisms of tolerance to antigens moving through the digestive tract are known to be regulated by intestinal DCs. Agnatha and Gnathostoma are descendants of a common ancestor. The Ostracoderms gave rise to Cyclostomes, whereas t...

Pharmaceuticals are now considered to be established contaminants, and their presence in water poses a real risk not only to the marine ecosystem, as they may adversely affect non-target organisms that are exposed to them, but also indirectly to humans. This is particularly true for the model organism considered in this work, Mytilus galloprovincia...

The combination of cyclodextrins (CD) with graphene-based nanomaterials (GBN) have been widely investigated to obtain graphene/cyclodextrin nanomaterials (GCD) endowed with unique relationships with biomolecules and/or living cells. However, their development in nanomedicine is still confined in the laboratory arena due to the lack of in vivo studi...

The present paper represents the first description of abnormal hermaphroditism in Galeus melastomus (Rafinesque, 1810). The black mouth cat shark specimen, collected in summer from southern Tyrrhenian Sea at the entrance of Salerno gulf, showed a basic intersexuality characterized by the presence of male secondary and female primary sexual characte...

In fish, the spleen is the prime secondary lymphoid organ. It has a role in the induction of adaptive immune responses, in addition to its significance in the elimination of immune complexes. This study was conducted on 18 randomly obtained adult molly fish (Poecilia sphenops) of both sexes using histological, immunohistochemical, and ultrastructur...

In the present note an adult female of Tremoctopus violaceus delle Chiaje, 1830, is recorded from the Strait of Messina. Species of the family Tremoctopodidae are widely distributed in tropical oceans, but rare in coastal waters. The morphological characteristics coincide with those described by other authors. Necroscopic examination performed did...

Drugs are considered emerging contaminants and they are often found in water in various concentrations. Among the most common are anti-inflammatory drugs. Acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) is one of the most widely produced and consumed non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, in the order of several kilotons per year (Piedade et al., 2020). As these substa...

The biodiversity of Mediterranean fishes is continuously evolving in the last decades, due both to the effects of non-indigenous species invasions and the influences of the global climate change. Monitoring the occurrence and the distribution of fish populations is of fundamental importance, especially in a semi-closed basin such as the Mediterrane...

Plastic represents the most abundant class of litter in the Oceans [Canals et al 2021; Pham et al. 2014; Worm et al. 2017] and its presence has been recognized globally [Bergmann et al. 2015; Cau et al. 2018; Chiba et al. 2018; Suaria et al. 2016]. Its impact on marine ecosystems is currently considered a hot topic for both scientific community and...

The endostyle is the first component of the ascidian digestive tract, it is shaped like a through and is located in the pharynx's ventral wall. This organ is divided longitudinally into nine zones that are parallel to each other. Each zone's cells are physically and functionally distinct. Support elements are found in zones 1, 3, and 5, while mucop...

Reports of rare species are essential for increasing knowledge for biodiversity studies. The Tremoctopodidae is a small family of epipelagic to mesopelagic octopuses with a single genus, Tremoctopus and four recognized species (Diaz et al.,2004). Specimens belonging to Tremoctopus sp. have been rarely found along the Italian coasts (Bello, 2008; Be...

The importance of studying fish otolith morphology and morphometry is nowadays well recognized. These are one of the most useful anatomical structures to study many aspects of teleost life, due to their valuable time-keeping properties. Several factors can affect shape and microstructure of otoliths, such as environmental parameters, feeding habits...

Rodlet cells (RCs) have always been an enigma for scientists. RCs have been given a variety of activities over the years, including ion transport, osmoregulation, and sensory function. These cells, presumably as members of the granulocyte line, are present only in teleosts and play a role in the innate immune response. RCs are migratory cells found...

Acetylcholine (Ach) represents the old neurotransmitter in central and peripheral nervous system. Its muscarinic and nicotinic receptors (mAChRs and nAChRs) constitute an independent cholinergic system that is found in immune cells and play a key role in the regulation of the immune function and cytokine production. Gas exchanging surfaces of the g...

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are found widespread in nature and possess antimicrobial and immunomodulatory activities. Due to their multifunctional properties, these peptides are a focus of growing body of interest and have been characterized in several fish species. Due to their similarities in amino-acid composition and amphipathic design, it ha...

Transitional water environments represent very ecologically interesting areas, which provide various ecosystem services, both concerning biodiversity protection and sustainable fruition of resources. In this way, the evaluation of total carbon and its components, chlorophyll, and chemical and physical parameters is of fundamental importance to deep...

Acetylcholine (Ach) represents the old neurotransmitter in central and peripheral nervous system. Its muscarinic and nicotinic receptors (mAChRs and nAChRs) constitute an independent cholinergic system that is found in immune cells and play a key role in the regulation of the immune function and cytokine production. Gas exchanging surfaces of the g...

Otoliths are used in taxonomy and ichthyology as they can provide a wide range of information about specimens. They are an essential tool to monitor the most sensitive species for a sustainable exploitation level. Despite the increasing use of sagittae in research, their inter- and intra-specific variability and eco-functionality are still poorly e...

Data on the biology and ecology of Galeus melastomus are old/absent for the Southern Tyrrhenian Sea, despite there being numerous studies in the wider area. A total of 127 specimens of G. melastomus from the southern Tyrrhenian Sea, collected in 2018–2019 using trawling nets, were analyzed to investigate size at sexual maturity, sex ratio, length–w...

Otolith features are useful tools for studying taxonomy, ecology, paleontology, and fish biology since they represent a permanent record of life history. Nevertheless, the functional morphology of otoliths remains an open research question that is useful to completely understand their eco-morphology. This study aims to deepen the knowledge of intra...

The rapid development of aquaculture makes it desirable to use environment-friendly methods of purifying the wastewater effluent. Seaweed is often cultured for the dual purpose of useful algal biomass production and its bioremediation potential. This paper offers a survey on growth characters and ecological functions of the macroalgae Gracilaria gr...

Hyperpolarization-activated cyclic nucleotide-gated (HCN) channels are proteins that contain highly conserved functional domains and sequence motifs that are correlated with their unique biophysical activities, to regulate cardiac pacemaker activity and synaptic transmission. These pacemaker proteins have been studied in mammalian species, but litt...

Heteropneustes fossilis is an air-breathing teleost inhabiting environments with very poor O2 conditions, and so it has evolved to cope with hypoxia. In the gills and respiratory air-sac, the sites for O2 sensing and the response to hypoxia rely on the expression of acetylcholine (Ach) acting via its nicotinic receptor (nAChR). This study examined...

Microplastic (MP) pollution is an emerging global challenge and actually has become a reality in aquatic ecosystems in Albania. According to World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report of 2019, Albania, is one of the most problematic countries, with the highest percentage of untreated plastic waste, 73%, and one of the top 4 countries with the highest norm of...

Microplastic (MP) and microfiber (MF) pollution is a great concern worldwide due to their ubiquity in aquatic environment, becoming a potential threat to aquatic organisms. The accumulation of MPs in freshwater and marine environments can have strong ecological implications, mainly due to their long persistence, toxicity and ability to adsorb other...

The incidence of microplastics (MPs) uptake in marine organisms is a topic recently focused by scientific community. Despite this, the impacts of these pollutants still remain largely unknown, especially for zooplanktonic organisms. In the present study, it has been evaluated how within first 7 days of life cycle, 10 μm Polybead® Blue Dyed Microsph...

In the present study, it has been evaluated how 10 μm of polyethylene microspheres can be ingested by Artemia salina (Linnaeus, 1758) larvae within the first 7 days of the life cycle, and the impact on their health. Twelve A. salina larvae (instar I) groups were exposed to different micro-plastics (MPs) concentrations (0-1-10-100-1000-10000 MPs/mL)...

We reviewed literature on the diet of the Galeus melastomus Rafinesque, 1810, from the Mediterranean Sea. Specific keywords (“Galeus melastomus diet”, “feeding habits”, “trophic position”, “biology”, “deep environment adaptation”) in the principal data sources, such as Web of Science, PubMed, and Google Scholar were used. Seventeen studies conducte...

Environmental pollution by plastic particles is of major global concern, as a potential threat to aquatic organisms and ecosystems. The accumulation of microplastics in freshwater and marine environments has strong ecological implications due to their long persistence, potential toxicity, and ability to adsorb other pollutants, acting as vectors of...

Over the last decades, scientific interest for fish otolith morphology and morphometry increased significatively. These are useful tools to study many aspects of teleost life in marine environment. Several factors can affect shape and microstructure of otoliths, such as environmental parameters, feeding habits, ontogeny, physiology and phylogeny. A...

It is well known that microplastics are ingested by a wide range of marine organisms. Little is known about their occurrence in cnidarians. The paper reports microplastic contamination in Pelagia noctiluca, collected from the Strait of Messina. Our results confirm the ability of this species to uptake plastic particles, in relation to its feeding b...

Acetylcholine (Ach) is the main neurotransmitter in the neuronal cholinergic system and also works as a signaling molecule in non-neuronal cells and tissues. The diversity of signaling pathways mediated by Ach provides a basis for understanding the biology of the cholinergic epithelial cells and immune cells in the gill of the species studied. NECs...