Luisa Mangialajo

University of Nice Sophia Antipolis | UNS · Faculty of Sciences

Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) are increasing in temperate areas, and the growth rates of benthic harmful dinoflagellates may be favoured in the context of global climate change. Benthic dinoflagellates, including species belonging to the Ostreopsis Schmidt genus, are known to develop on the surface of macroalgae and different macroalgal morphotypes a...

Linking marine biodiversity conservation, food safety and blue economy : a One health approach to address HABs in the Mediterranean Sea

In June 2023, the IUCN Species Survival Commission created the Seaweed Specialist Group. This international group of scientists and practitioners will work to assess and improve the conservation status of seaweeds, build networks and partnerships to prioritize conservation actions and communicate the importance of seaweed species. Seaweeds (macroa...

Tools for Sampling and Screening Ostreopsis and Its Associated Toxins in the Benthic Compartment

The worldwide decline of macroalgal forests is raising major concerns for the potentially negative consequences on biodiversity and ecosystem functions, pushing for the definition of specific conservation and restoration measures. Protecting and restoring these habitats requires detailed information on their distribution, ecological status, and dri...

RESUME En réponse à des enjeux d’intégration écologique, différentes approches d’éco-conception des ouvrages maritimes ont été développées ces dernières années ; l’objectif étant d’apporter des fonctions écologiques complémentaires aux fonctions techniques premières de ces ouvrages (digues, quais, pontons, corps-morts, émissaires...). En fonction d...

Essential for healthy oceans, coastal communities, fisheries, economies, and marine biodiversity from the subtropics to the polar regions, kelp forests are an integral and threatened ocean ecosystem. Their benefits are connected to over 740 million people who live beside a kelp forest, and their economic potential is valued at least 500 billion USD...

Marine kelp forests cover 1/3 of our world's coastlines, are heralded as a nature-based solution to address socio-environmental issues, connect hundreds of millions of people with the ocean, and support a rich web of biodiversity throughout our oceans. But they are increasingly threatened with some areas reporting over 90% declines in kelp forest c...

Macroalgal forests characterised by species of the genus Cystoseira sensu lato form important shallow coastal rocky habitats in the Mediterranean Sea. These forests support a high biodiversity and provide important ecosystem services and societal benefits. Currently these habitats are often in a poor condition in many areas, due to loss and degrada...

Grazing is one of the most important biological factors controlling the abundance of early-life stages of fucoids and one of the major issues when restoring marine forests. Benthic macroinvertebrates (e.g., sea urchins) and fish shape and regulate benthic macroalgal communities from polar to tropical regions and can be responsible for regime shifts...

To enrich spatio-temporal information on the distribution of alien, cryptogenic, and neonative species in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, a collective effort by 173 marine scientists was made to provide unpublished records and make them open access to the scientific community. Through this effort, we collected and harmonized a dataset of 12,64...

The process of site selection and spatial planning has received scarce attention in the scientific literature dealing with marine restoration, suggesting the need to better address how spatial planning tools could guide restoration interventions. In this study, for the first time, the consequences of adopting different restoration targets and crite...

Marine forests are shrinking globally due to several anthropogenic impacts including climate change. Forest-forming macroalgae, such as Cystoseiras.l. species, can be particularly sensitive to environmental conditions (e.g. temperature increase, pollution or sedimentation), especially during early life stages. However, not much is known about their...

Prey fish cohabit with specialized predator fish within structurally complex habitats. How the vertical stratification of the habitat affects lethal and behavioral predator–prey interactions and contributes to explaining these patterns has never been investigated within a forest-like marine habitat, i.e., a habitat containing three vertical strata...

In recent decades, recurrent Ostreopsis spp. blooms have been recorded throughout the globe, causing public health issues and mass mortalities of invertebrates. Ostreopsis species are benthic and develop in shallow waters in close relation with a substrate, but possible substrate preferences are still ambiguous. Bloom develops on both living and de...

Mediterranean coralligenous outcrops are a biodiversity hotspot where cryptobenthic and epibenthic fish species conform an important proportion of the inhabiting fish ssemblages. We investigated the distribution of epibenthic fish assemblages in coralligenous outcrops, the contiguous detritic bottoms and the margin where coralligenous outcrops meet...

Cystoseira sensu lato (Class Phaeophyceae, Order Fucales, Family Sargassaceae) forests play a central role in marine Mediterranean ecosystems. Over the last decades, Cystoseira s.l. suffered from a severe loss as a result of multiple anthropogenic stressors. In particular, Gongolaria barbata has faced multiple human-induced threats, and, despite it...

Fucalean brown algae of the genera Carpodesmia, Cystoseira and Treptacantha are a typical feature of shallow subtidal Mediterranean habitats, where these habitat-forming seaweeds produce canopies playing a key role in the functioning of coastal ecosystems. In recent decades these communities have undergone a major decline in cover and biomass; this...

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...

Stipitate kelp species such as Laminaria digitata dominate most cold-water subtidal rocky shores and form underwater forests which are among the most productive coastal systems worldwide. Laminaria also sustains rich bacterial communities which offer a variety of biotechnological applications. However, to date, in-depth studies on the diversity and...

The role of herbivorous fish in threatening marine forests of temperate seas has been generally overlooked. Only recently, the scientific community has highlighted that high fish herbivory can lead to regime shifts from canopy‐forming algae to less complex turf communities. Here, we present an innovative herbivorous Fish Deterrent device (DeFish),...

Macroalgal forests are one of the most productive and valuable marine ecosystems, but yet strongly exposed to fragmentation and loss. Detailed large-scale information on their distribution is largely lacking, hindering conservation initiatives. In this study, a systematic effort to combine spatial data on Cystoseira C. Agardh canopies (Fucales, Pha...

Chercheurs et spécialistes des laboratoires publics et privés se sont mobilisés pour centraliser et synthétiser, dans ce nouveau cahier, les effets du changement climatique sur la santé en région Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur et proposer des actions pour en limiter les conséquences. Pour citation : Les cahiers du GREC-SUD édités par l’Association pou...

Uranium speciation and bioaccumulation were investigated in the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus. Through accumulation experiments in a well-controlled aquarium followed by ICP-OES analysis, the quantification of uranium in the different compartments of the sea urchin was performed. Uranium is mainly distributed in the test (skeletal components), a...

Sea urchins, ecologically important herbivores of shallow subtidal temperate reefs, are considered particularly threatened in a future ocean acidification scenario, since their carbonate structures (skeleton and grazing apparatus) are made up of the very soluble high-magnesium calcite, particularly sensitive to a decrease in pH. The biomechanical p...

Toxic blooms of Ostreopsis spp. are greatly challenging to monitor due to the complexity and variability of cell repartition among benthic and pelagic compartments. This results in marked differences in employed meth-odologies for the survey of their dynamics and hampers the definition of the associated toxic risk. The present study aims at testing...

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are key tools to mitigate human impacts in coastal environments, promoting sustainable activities to conserve biodiversity. The designation of MPAs alone may not result in the lessening of some human threats, which is highly dependent on management goals and the related specific regulations that are adopted. Here, we d...

: In the Mediterranean Sea, many species of Cystoseira , which are important habitat-forming species on shallow rocky bottoms, have gone missing from many coastal areas, impairing essential ecosystem services. Cystoseira crinita forests thrive in very shallow waters from sheltered environments and are currently regressing in several European shores...

: In the Mediterranean Sea, many species of Cystoseira , which are important habitat-forming species on shallow rocky bottoms, have gone missing from many coastal areas, impairing essential ecosystem services. Cystoseira crinita forests thrive in very shallow waters from sheltered environments and are currently regressing in several European shores...

Coastal areas have been transformed worldwide by urbanization, so that artificial structures are now widespread. Current coastal development locally depletes many native marine species, while offering limited possibilities for their expansion. Eco-engineering interventions intend to identify ways to facilitate the presence of focal species and thei...

: In the Mediterranean Sea, many species of Cystoseira , which are important habitat-forming species on shallow rocky bottoms, have gone missing from many coastal areas, impairing essential ecosystem services. Cystoseira crinita forests thrive in very shallow waters from sheltered environments and are currently regressing in several European shores...

This paper describes the adoption and validation of two innovative methods for the automated count of Ostreopsis spp. concentration in sea water: a molecular assay based on RT-qPCR and an opto-electronic device implementing automatic recognition algorithms. The proposed approaches were tested on samples coming from different locations along the Med...

Canopy-forming algae are declining globally due to multiple disturbances. This decline has recently been on the increase due to the spread of some tropical herbivorous fishes. This new phenomenon has drawn attention to the effects of fish herbivory in temperate areas, which have been assumed to be negligible compared to that of invertebrates, such...

Macroalgae is one of the Biological Quality Elements (BQE) used by several indexes conceived in the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) for the assessment of the Ecological status of coastal water bodies. Among them, CARLIT index, based on the cartography of rocky-shore littoral communities, has been extensively and successfully applied in the...

This volume contains the main results of the EC FP7 “The Ocean of Tomorrow” Project CoCoNet, divided in two sections: 1) a set of guidelines to design networks of Marine Protected Areas in the Mediterranean and the Black Seas; 2) a smart wind chart that will allow evaluating the possibility of installing Offshore Wind Farms in both seas. The concep...

Despite the potential negative human health, ecological and economic impact, the ecology of harmful benthic dinoflagellate blooms remains largely unknown. This is probably due to the complex interactions among biotic and abiotic drivers that influence blooms, but also to the difficulty in quantifying cell abundance in a comparable way over large sp...

The European Red List of Habitats provides an overview of the risk of collapse (degree of endangerment) of marine, terrestrial and freshwater habitats in the European Union (EU28) and adjacent regions (EU28+), based on a consistent set of categories and criteria, and detailed data and expert knowledge from involved countries1. A total of 257 benthi...

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) have spread across the Mediterranean to protect its rich biodiversity and manage human activities for a more sustainable coastal development. Within MPAs, traditional artisanal fishing is competing for space and resources with increasing recreational fishing, likely leading to interacting ecological effects. Such effec...

In Mediterranean subtidal rocky reefs, Cystoseira spp. (Phaeophyceae) form dense canopies up to 1 m high. Such habitats, called 'Cystoseira forests', are regressing across the entire Mediterranean Sea due to multiple anthropogenic stressors, as are other large brown algae forests worldwide. Cystoseira forests are being replaced by structurally less...

List of the macrophytes operational taxonomic units and their functional group. (DOCX)

Supplementary analysis of fish body size distributions across habitats: Methods and Results. (See also S2 Fig) (DOCX)

Fish body-size distributions compared across habitat types and Localities. Curves are smoothed histograms (Kernel density estimations) of total lengths of all sampled fish (crypto- or necto- benthic) within each level of the combined factor habitat X locality-protection (region-time). The surfaces below the curves (the integrals) are proportional t...

Sampling of necto-benthic fish assemblage structure using the UVC methodology ‘9 m² stationary-point snapshot-count’. The 9m² sampling area was the semicircle 2.5 m in radius in front of the diver, without considering the inner part, semicircle 0.7 m in radius. (TIFF)

Geographical coordinates of the 23 sampling sites. Latitude (North) and Longitude (East) are in decimal degrees (See also Fig 2). (DOCX)

Possible mechanisms underlying differences in fish assemblage composition between Cystoseira forest, turfs and barrens. A discussion enriched by previous studies on density patterns and fish life history traits found in the literature. (DOCX)

Due to the emergent phenomenon of the toxic dinoflagellate Ostreopsis ovata, public awareness on benthic microalgae increased in the Mediterranean over the past decades. Forming dense blooms close to public beaches, this toxic species can affect human health by direct intoxications, e.g. over aerosols and skin contact. Leading to first incidents re...

Due to the emergent phenomenon of the toxic dinoflagellate Ostreopsis ovata, public awareness on benthic microalgae increased in the Mediterranean over the past decades. Forming dense blooms close to public beaches, this toxic species can affect human health by direct intoxications, e.g. over aerosols and skin contact. Leading to first incidents re...

Ecological connectivity is important for effective marine planning and biodiversity conservation. Our aim was to identify factors important in influencing variation in benthic community structure on shallow rocky reefs in 2 regions of the Mediterranean Sea with contrasting oceanographic regimes. We assessed beta (β) diversity at 146 sites in the li...

Ecological connectivity is important for effective marine planning and biodiversity conservation. Our aim was to identify factors important in influencing variation in benthic community structure on shallow rocky reefs in 2 regions of the Mediterranean Sea with contrasting oceanographic regimes. We assessed beta (β) diversity at 146 sites in the li...

With the aim to address some of the complex needs of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) management, the results of the “Monitoring Mediterranean Marine Protected Area” project (MMMPA) are here synthesized in a series of timely and original guidelines.

The European Red List of Habitats provides an overview of the risk of collapse (degree of endangerment) of marine, terrestrial and freshwater habitats in the European Union (EU28) and adjacent regions (EU28+), based on a consistent set of categories and criteria, and detailed data and expert knowledge from involved countries. A total of 257 benthic...

Benthic harmful algae blooms are a topic of increasing public awareness in temperate areas. In the last decades, frequent blooms of the toxic dinoflagellate Ostreopsis cf. ovata caused public health issues and highlighted the need of a better knowledge on seasonal dynamics and environmental drivers. This is one of the main goals of the M3HABs proje...

Over the past decades Harmful Algal Blooms have increased worldwide, with an increase in number of affected areas. Over the past decade the dinoflagellate Ostreopsis cf. ovata came in the focus of the Mediterranean marine research. Forming dense blooms close to urban structures this toxic species increased the public awareness and reveal the need f...

In the Mediterranean Sea, Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are nearly 700, covering approximately 5% of the sea surface, but merely 0.1% of the Mediterranean's total surface is included in no-take zones. Mediterranean MPAs are often established according to political or socioeconomic criteria more than nature conservation aspects, and only less than h...

The pan-Mediterranean project M3-HABs regarding monitoring of harmful algal blooms, with particular reference to the benthic dinoflagellate Ostreopsis, started in 2014 in the framework of the ENPI-CBCMED Programme. The specific objective of the project is to provide a common strategy for monitoring benthic toxic microalgae, through the development...

Several indices based on the composition and abundance of aquatic flora have been developed to assess the ecological status of coastal waters along the European coasts in the context of the Water Framework Directive. This directive pointed out the intercalibration of indices based on the same biological element within an eco-region to ensure the co...

Recovery from disturbance is an important attribute of community dynamics. Temperate rocky shores will experience increases in both the type and intensity of impacts under future expected global change. To gauge the community response to these potential changes in the disturbance regime it is important to assess space occupancy and the temporal dyn...

Macrophyte-formed habitats are important components of coastal temperate seascapes. They usually host higher diversity and density of fishes, including both adult and juvenile individuals. Here we synthesized the ecological processes underlying differences in fish assemblage structure among habitats, with an emphasis on the effects of habitat archi...