Iole Di Capua

• MSc
• Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn

The NEREA (Naples Ecological REsearch for Augmented observatories) initiative aims to establish an augmented observatory in the Gulf of Naples (GoN), designed to advance the understanding of marine ecosystems through a holistic approach. Inspired by the Tara Oceans expedition and building on the scientific legacy of the MareChiara Long-Term Ecologi...

The aim of the present study was to characterize, for the first time, the poly(ADP-ribosyl)ation system in the micro-crustacean copepod Temora stylifera, a widespread species in the coastal area of the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the dominant calanoid of the zooplankton assemblage in the Gulf of Naples. The analysis of endogenous poly(ADP-ribose)...

Marine and coastal ecosystems respond to climate change in various ways, such as the type of ecosystem, the species composition, interactions, and distribution, and the effect of local stressors. Metazoan organisms, particularly zooplankton, are important indicators for monitoring the effects climate-driven warming in marine coastal ecosystems over...

Recently, significant changes in coastal zooplankton were detected at the LTER-Marechiara site in in the Gulf of Naples. In particular, after 2010 a relative increase of crustacean and gelatinous filter feeders (cladocerans, appendicularians and thaliaceans) and overall decrease of copepods have been observed. This change coincided with a relative...

This Collective Article presents information about 30 species with records in eight countries (Greece, Israel, Italy, Montenegro, Slovenia, Spain, Syria and Türkiye) and six ecoregions extending from the Alboran to the Levantine Seas. The recorded species belong to eight Phyla (4 Chlorophyta, 1 Rhodophyta, 1 Porifera, 3 Cnidaria, 2 Platyhelminthes,...

The use of metabarcoding has greatly improved the assessment of marine metazoans. However, it is still uncertain whether metabarcoding analyses (eDNA) accurately captures the diversity in the field. This study aims to use an integrated approach merging α-taxonomy and organismal eDNA analysis of two genetic markers (COI and 18S), to observe for the...

As Guest Editors, we are very pleased to present this book based on the Special Issue “Ecology of Marine Zooplankton”, published in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering. Zooplanktonic organisms preside over a crucial position within marine food webs, providing the link between primary producers and higher trophic levels, but also sustainin...

Marine ecosystems, from coastal areas to open waters, teem with a multitude of heterotrophic and mixotrophic organisms collectively forming the zooplankton, the animal component of the plankton [...]

Among non-native copepods, the calanoid Pseudodiaptomus marinus Sato, 1913 is the species probably spreading at the fastest pace in European and neighbouring waters since its first record in the Adriatic Sea in 2007. In this contribution, we provide an update on the distribution of P. marinus in the Mediterranean and Black Seas, along the Atlantic...

Molecular tools increasingly refine and improve the identification of zooplankton organisms based on phenotypic features, providing a more robust and comprehensive species description. Integration of data helps revealing the hidden diversity of zooplankton and facilitating the detection of rare and non‐indigenous species. This approach, merging mor...

Long‐term ecological research has revealed the impact of climate on marine ecosystems at multiple time scales. Changes in the pelagic system have been detected at the LTER‐MC site in the Gulf of Naples (Tyrrhenian Sea, western Mediterranean) since 1984. Here we analyzed the time series to determine whether zooplankton had significantly changed over...

Centropages typicus is a temperate calanoid copepod occurring in Atlantic and Mediterranean coastal waters, where its reproductive biology and population dynamics are well‐known. C. typicus has also been suggested as a key species for monitoring the impact of environmental changes on copepod secondary production. The aim of this study is to investi...

Living organisms deeply rely on the acquisition of chemical signals in any aspect of their life, from searching for food, mating and defending themselves from stressors. Copepods, the most abundant and ubiquitous metazoans on Earth, possess diversified and highly specified chemoreceptive structures along their body. The detection of chemical stimul...

Over the last decade, the calanoid copepod Pseudodiaptomus marinus--native to the Indian Ocean--has rapidly spread throughout the European Seas. Here we report its first occurrence in the southern Levantine Sea. Zooplankton samples were collected monthly by vertical net hauls in a coastal monitoring station at the Israeli Mediterranean Sea during 2...

Zooplankton molecular analyses allow for accurate species identification with a proper molecular signature, complementing classic phenotypic-based taxonomy (α taxonomy). For the first time in the Mediterranean Sea, cytochrome oxidase I (COI) gene sequences of calanoid copepods were associated with morphological identification, HD and SEM images, us...

Zooplankton, collected in the Gulf of Tadjoura (Republic of Djibouti) during a cruise conducted to study the feeding behavior of the whale shark Rhincodon typus, was analyzed in terms of size class, abundance and species composition. This pilot study was aimed to better understand a possible correlation between mesozooplankton composition and size...

Margalef and Shannon-wiener Indexes

Metabarcoding of environmental DNA has provided striking insights into marine microbial diversity. With this approach, we assessed the diversity of metazoan assemblages and their temporal variations at the Long-Term Ecological Research site MareChiara (LTER-MC) in the Gulf of Naples (Mediterranean Sea). The Illumina sequencing of the V4-18S rRNA fr...

Microplastics are recognised as a potential global threat to marine ecosystems, but the biological mechanisms determining their impact on marine life are still largely unknown. Here, we investigated the effects of microplastics on the red coral, a long-lived habitat-forming organism belonging to the Corallium genus, which is present at almost all l...

1. Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers in anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus) egg samples were analysed to detect their origin on a small spatial scale (200 km) by assigning genotypes to adult anchovy stocks. The novelty of this work is the application of a rapid high-throughput method for genotyping each single anchovy egg, in a single execu...

While the effects of industrial contamination in coastal areas may persist for years in benthos communities, plankton should not show persistent impairments because of their high spatial dynamics, fast turnover times and pronounced seasonality. To test this hypothesis, in 2019 we conducted five surveys in the Bay of Pozzuoli (Gulf of Naples, Medite...

Since 2007, the non-indigenous calanoid copepod Pseudodiaptomus marinus Sato, 1913 has been increasingly recorded in numerous European sites, spreading at an unexpectedly fast pace over a short time-span. This species presents specific biological and behavioural traits which make it of particular interest for ecological and applied research topics....

It is known that juveniles whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) have tendency to gather, seasonally, in a few coastal areas around the world to feed on zooplankton; however little is known about their food preferences. The CSS (Centro Studi Squali) scientific coordinator of the project “Whale shark feeding ecology” (in partnership with University of Cala...

We describe the analysis of SNP markers in anchovy (E. encrasicolus) egg samples to detect their origin at spatial small-scale (200 Km) by assigning genotypes to adult anchovies stocks. The novelty of this work is the application of a high-throughput rapid method for genotyping each single anchovy egg, in a single execution, using a set of 96 geno...

The marine copepod Paracalanus parvus has long been considered the most abundant representative of the genus and one of the main components of coastal zooplankton in the Mediterranean and Black Seas. However, subtle morphological differences between P. parvus, P. indicus and P. quasimodo hamper correct taxonomic identification. To clarify the taxon...

1st Advanced Zooplankton Course – AZC1 Morphological and Molecular Taxonomy of Marine Copepods

A first synoptic and trans-domain overviewof plankton dynamics was conducted across the aquatic sites belonging to the Italian Long-Term Ecological Research Network (LTER-Italy). Based on published studies, checked and complemented with unpublished information, we investigated phytoplankton and zooplankton annual dynamics and long-term changes acro...

Salps (pelagic tunicates) are rarely observed in nature and trophic interactions involving them mainly rely on the inspection of stomach contents of their potential predators. Moreover, salps have soft bodies that are hardly identified in potential consumers. We involved recreational SCUBA-divers and photographers in collecting de visu evidence of...

Mortality affects the dynamics of zooplankton populations with important effects on trophic interactions and biogeochemical fluxes in marine environments, but is still one of the processes least investigated in the field. In the present study, the non-predatory mortality in copepod assemblages and species was investigated by applying the Neutral Re...

Mortality affects the dynamics of zooplankton populations with important effects on trophic interactions and biogeochemical fluxes in marine environments, but is still one of the processes least investigated in the field. In the present study, the non-predatory mortality in copepod assemblages and species was investigated by applying the neutral re...

Anchovies represent the largest world’s marine fish catches and the current threats on their populations impose a sustainable exploitment based on sound scientific information. In the European anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus), the existence of several populations has been proposed but a global view is missing. Using a multidisciplinary approach, he...

highly diverse coral mounds, is rich in Cnidaria and Porifera communities and has great potential for marine genetic resources. Increased access to remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) is opening up new collection opportunities. One issue with the deep sea is that we do not always know which species are present, as survey work to date has been limited...

Copepods belonging to the Oncaeidae family are commonly and abundantly found in marine zooplankton. In the Mediterranean Sea, forty-seven oncaeid species occur, of which eleven in the Gulf of Naples. In this Gulf, several Oncaea species were morphologically analysed and described at the end of the XIX century by W. Giesbrecht. In the same area, onc...

Maximum Likelihood tree constructed on ITS2 rDNA sequences from the species Macrocyclops leukarti, Megacyclops albidus, Thermocyclops oithonides, Oithona similis and five Cyclops sternuus sequences used as outgroup. This tree was built using the ITS2 database [72] facilities. (TIF)

Maximum Likelihood tree constructed on ITS1 rDNA sequences. Digits at the nodes indicate bootstrap support (10,000 replicates). Values below 50 are not reported. (TIF)

ITS2 rDNA secondary structure predictions for all the sequences investigated in this work. (DOCX)

Maximum Likelihood tree constructed on COI mtDNA sequences. The GenBank accession number and the species names are reported. Digits at the nodes indicate bootstrap support (10,000 replicates). Values below 50 are not reported. (TIF)

Phylogenetic inference and molecular taxonomy are becoming increasingly important approaches to classical morphological systematics and marine ecology. The number of molecular markers suitable for such goals is quite high, but general use restricts the list to a few of them, mainly mitochondrial (namely COI and Cyt b), especially in copepods. The r...

A proposal for a network of Italian amphipodologists among the activities of the Marine Organisms Taxonomy Service at the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn di Napoli (Italy) is launched.

We compare the long-term and seasonal patterns of abundance and phenology of the cyclopoid copepod Oithona similis at the L4 site (1988–2013) in the North Atlantic and at the LTER-MC site (1984–2013) in the Mediterranean Sea to investigate whether high temperature limits the occurrence of this species with latitudinal cline. The two sites are well...

The internal organization of plankton communities plays a key role in biogeochemical cycles and functioning of aquatic ecosystems. In this study, the structure of a marine plankton community (including both unicellular and multicellular organisms) was inferred applying an ecological network approach to species abundances observed weekly at the Long...

A minimum mathematical model of the marine pelagic microbial food web has previously shown to be able to reproduce central aspects of observed system response to different bottom-up manipulations in a mesocosm experiment Microbial Ecosystem Dynamics (MEDEA) in Danish waters. In this study, we apply this model to two mesocosm experiments (Polar Aqua...

We analyzed the copepod assemblages over two decades (1984-2006) in a coastal ongoing time-series at Station MC in the inner Gulf of Naples (Tyrrhenian Sea, Western Mediterranean), which is part of the International network of Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER). The seasonal and interannual time courses of species abundance and composition were r...

We studied the effect of variable phytoplankton biomass and dominance of the diatom Skeletonema marinoi on the planktonic community respiratory carbon requirement over a period of 14 d (14 to 28 April 2008) in 3 different mesocosms filled with natural water at Espegrend marine biological field station in Raunefjord, Norway. The carbon requirement w...

Coastal zooplankton have been investigated since 1984 at a Long Term Ecological Research station MC (LTER-MC) in the inner Gulf of Naples (Tyrrhenian Sea, Western Mediterranean). The sampling site, located between the littoral and the open sea systems, has very active hydrography that affects plankton communities. The present work was aimed at esta...

Three species of Oncaeidae, Triconia umerus, T. hawii and T. rufa are reported for the first time in the coastal waters of the Gulf of Naples, Tyrrhenian Sea, western Mediterranean Sea. They were found in meso-zooplankton samples collected in 2004 and were absent from samples collected prior to 2004. Specimens of Triconia umerus and T. hawii were c...

Centropages typicus is one of the most common, abundant and best studied calanoid copepods in neritic waters of the Mediterranean Sea, which means it can provide useful information about the long-term dynamics of the Mediterranean epipelagic ecosystem. This paper presents the first comparative overview of the seasonal and long-term variability of C...

The population structure (NI to adults) of the copepods Centropages typicus and Temora stylifera was investigated in parallel at two sites in the eutrophic and oligotrophic waters of the Gulf of Naples (Tyrrhenian Sea) with the aim of identifying the environmental factors that modulate the occurrence of these calanoids that are abundant in the neri...

The present work on mesozooplankton of the Ionian Sea is part of a study aimed at assessing if the epipelagic communities had been affected by the changes in circulation (named EMT, Eastern Mediterranean Transient) observed in the eastern Mediterranean starting from 1988 as a transient effect of climate forcing. A temporal comparison was performed...