Miguel Baptista

• PhD
• PostDoc Position at University of Lisbon

The ocean sunfishes (family Molidae) include the largest and heaviest bony fishes in the world and species within the family are distributed from southern Chile to the Arctic Circle. The Molidae currently contains five species within three genera: Mola mola (Linnaeus, 1758), Mola alexandrini (Ranzani, 1839), Mola tecta (Nyegaard et al., 2017), Mast...

Mola mola is the largest teleost inhabiting our ocean and the presence of microplastics (MP) in this flagship species was, before this study, never described. Thus, this investigation focused on analysing MP ingestion in 53 ocean giant sunfish in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean. A total of 116 MP were found in 79% of the specimens, with a median of 1...

This study describes the first potential multi-species shark nursery area in Atlantic Africa (Sal Rei Bay – SRB, Boa Vista Island, Cabo Verde). From August 2016 to September 2019, 6162 neonates and juveniles of 5 different shark species were observed in SRB using beach gillnet-based bycatch surveys, namely milk (Rhizoprionodon acutus; n= 4908), sca...

Tetrodotoxin (TTX) is a potent neurotoxin naturally occurring in terrestrial and marine organisms such as pufferfish. Due to the risk of TTX poisoning, fish of Tetraodontidae family and other puffer-related species must not be placed in the EU markets. This restriction applies to fish of the family Molidae even though no data on toxins’ occurrence...

Mangroves occur in tropical and subtropical regions, including harsh arid areas. Little is known about how the environmental conditions of deserts influence the ecology of mangrove seedlings. The seedlings of the mangrove Avicennia marina were examined in situ in a natural stand of the southern Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia to (1) estimate and comp...

The global oxygen (O2) content in oceans is decreasing due to climatic changes since it is associated with temperature-driven declines in oxygen solubility, strengthened stratification of seawater masses, increased biological oxygen consumption and coastal eutrophication. More studies are required to focus onnocturnal hypoxia. The resilience of cor...

Stable isotope compositions of carbon and nitrogen (expressed as δ ¹³ C and δ ¹⁵ N) from the European common cuttlefish ( Sepia officinalis ) were measured in order to evaluate the utility of using these natural tracers throughout the Northeast Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea (NEAO-MS). Mantle tissue was obtained from S. officinalis collected...

Trace elements are potentially critical contaminants of aquatic environments and fish, occupying upper trophic levels, are especially vulnerable to bioaccumulation. Due to public health concerns, however, data on the elemental composition of non-commercially important marine species are particularly lacking. Ocean sunfish (Mola spp.) attain a low c...

Natural markers (δ13C and δ18O stable isotopes) in the cuttlebones of the European common cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) were determined for individuals collected across a substantial portion of their range in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean (NEAO) and Mediterranean Sea. Cuttlebone δ13C and δ18O were quantified for core and edge material to characteri...

Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is expected to continue rising by 2100, leading to a decrease in ocean pH in a process known as ocean acidification (OA). OA can have a direct impact on calcifying organisms, including on the cuttlebone of the common cuttlefish Sepia officinalis. Moreover, nutritional status has also been shown to affe...

Fish are frequently exposed to harmful algal blooms (HAB) and to related toxins. However, the biological effects of okadaic acid (OA), the most abundant and frequent HAB-toxin in Europe, South America and Asia, have been poorly investigated. In this study, fish swimming performance and metabolic rates were investigated in juveniles of Zebra seabrea...

Myctophids are key members of mesopelagic communities with a world biomass estimated at 600 million tons. They play a central role in oceanic food webs and are known to perform diel vertical migrations, crossing the thermocline and reaching the oxygen minimum zone, however, very scarce information exists on trace element content in these organisms....

Ocean acidification is one of the many consequences of climate change. Various studies suggest that marine organisms' behaviour will be impaired under high CO2. Here, we show that the cognitive performance of the cleaner wrasse, Labroides dimidiatus, has not suffered from the increase of CO2 from pre-industrial levels to today, and that the standin...

The effects of body size and season on the elemental composition of ocean sunfish Mola mola were assessed for the first time. A total of 57 by-caught juvenile specimens measuring between 31.8 and 120.3 cm were sampled in spring and autumn. Concentrations of trace elements (three essential - Co, Cu, Zn, and three non-essential - As, Cd, Pb) were det...

Tetracosapolyenoic fatty acids (TPA), namely tetracosapentaenoic (24:5n-6) and tetracosahexaenoic (24:6n-3) acids, are chemotaxonomic biomarkers of octocorals (Cnidaria, Octocorallia) in the marine environment. The present study confirms the occurrence of TPA on a marine non-cnidarian taxon, the nudibranch mollusc Armina maculata. This discovery is...

The present work expands the existing knowledge on M. mola ecology by assessing, for the first time, its abundance (and body size distribution) in the southern waters of Portugal and relating the associated temporal variations with environmental variables. There were significant seasonal differences in abundance, with peaks in spring and autumn and...

The sudden appearance and disappearance of nudibranchs in intertidal areas have puzzled researchers all over the world, giving rise to a great diversity of theories to explain it. Here we conducted a five-year survey to evaluate seasonal changes in the abundance of Dendrodoris herytra and D. grandiflora in the Sado estuary (Portugal) and to explore...

Climate change and chemical contamination are global environmental threats of growing concern for the scientific community and regulatory authorities. Yet, the impacts and interactions of both stressors (particularly ocean warming and emerging chemical contaminants) on physiological responses of marine organisms remain unclear and still require fur...

There is a general consensus that many shark species are declining in numbers. However, effective management measures often depend on knowing how trends in abundance and distribution are influenced by environmental conditions. Several efforts to describe the occurrence and distribution of basking sharks Cetorhinus maximus have been made in northern...

Marine pleustonic species such as the hydrozoans Velella velella and Physalia physalis, are known to drift in the world's oceans driven by winds, currents and tides. Here we present the first chemotaxonomic characterization, based on the fatty acid (FA) profile, of these two charismatic oceanic species that thrive in the interface layer between air...

Sharks occupy high trophic levels in marine habitats and play a key role in the structure and function of marine communities. Their populations have been declining worldwide by ≥90 %, and their adaptive potential to future ocean conditions is believed to be limiting. Here we experimentally exposed recently hatched bamboo shark (Chiloscyllium puncta...

Little empirical information is currently available on the potential effects of acidification and/or warming in sharks, but none exist about digestive capabilities under such future conditions. Here, we investigated the impact of both acidification (ΔpH = 0.5) and warming (+4; 30 °C) on the digestive enzyme levels of recently hatched tropical bambo...

Seahorses are currently facing great challenges in the wild, including habitat degradation and overexploitation, and how they will endure additional stress from rapid climate change has yet to be determined. Unlike most fishes, the poor swimming skills of seahorses, along with the ecological and biological constraints of their unique lifestyle, pla...

Few studies have been conducted on the temporal dynamics of both amino acid (AA) and fatty acid (FA) profiles in marine bivalves. We investigated the seasonal variation of these compounds in the pod razor clam Ensis siliqua in relation to food availability, salinity, water temperature and reproductive cycle. AA content varied between 46.94 and 54.6...

Sharks are one of the most threatened groups of marine animals worldwide, mostly owing to overfishing and habitat degradation/loss. Although these cartilaginous fish have evolved to fill many ecological niches across a wide range of habitats, they have limited capability to rapidly adapt to human-induced changes in their environments. Contrary to g...

Cleaning symbioses play an important role in the health of certain coastal marine communities. These interspecific associations often occur at specific sites (cleaning stations) where a cleaner organism (commonly a fish or shrimp) removes ectoparasites/damaged tissue from a “client” (a larger cooperating fish). At present, the potential impact of c...

Little is known about the capacity of early life stages to undergo hypercapnic and thermal acclimation under the future scenarios of ocean acidification and warming. Here, we investigated a comprehensive set of biological responses to these climate change-related variables (2°C above winter and summer average spawning temperatures and ΔpH=0.5 units...

The ability to understand and predict the effects of ocean warming (under realistic scenarios) on marine biota is of paramount importance, especially at the most vulnerable early life stages. Here we investigated the impact of predicted environmental warming (+3 °C) on the development, metabolism, heat shock response and antioxidant defense mechani...

The combined effects of future ocean acidification and global warming on the hypoxia thresholds of marine biota are, to date, poorly known. Here, we show that the future warming and acidification scenario led to shorter embryonic periods, lower survival rates and the enhancement of premature hatching in the cuttlefish Sepia officinalis. Routine met...

The aim of the present study was to evaluate, for the first time, the effect of environmental warming on the metabolic and behavioral ecology of a temperate seahorse, Hippocampus guttulatus. More specifically, we compared routine metabolic rates, thermal sensitivity, ventilation rates, food intake, and behavioral patterns at average spring temperat...

The present study provides a comprehensive analysis of the biochemical composition (proximate composition, amino acids and fatty acids in gonad, digestive gland and muscle) of the cirrate octopod, Opisthoteuthis calypso, collected off the coast of Portugal. Protein and energy contents of O. calypso were significantly lower (p < 0.05) than those obs...

Veretillum cynomorium is an abundant colonial octocoral that exclusively inhabits soft sediment and sandy substrata of the Eastern Atlantic Ocean, but its reproductive biology is completely unknown. Here we show, for the first time, that this sea pen is gonochoristic at colony level, and seems to reproduce sexually through the broadcast spawning of...

The aim of this study was to examine the depth-related changes in the diversity of decapod crustaceans from the intertidal to abyssal zones off Madeira Archipelago, a chain of islands in the subtropical North East Atlantic Ocean. The bathymetric gradient in species richness was evaluated using the reported ranges of 175 out of approximately 186 dec...

The majority of biochemical studies in corals has been focused on the lipidic composition and little attention has been given to the amino acid profile of these invertebrates. The objectives of this work were to investigate, for the first time, the temporal variations in the total amino acid (AA) composition of an octocoral, namely the sea pen Vere...

The objectives of the present work were to investigate the temporal variation in the fatty acid (FA) composition of the octocoral Veretillum cynomorium, examine the effects of reproduction and environmental factors on FA variation, and establish a chemotaxonomic identification for this species. Mean oocyte size-frequency distributions showed that t...