Núria Teixidó

Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn | Stazione Zoologica · Integrated Marine Ecology (Ischia)

Seagrasses are important primary producers in oceans worldwide. They live in shallow coastal waters that are experiencing carbon dioxide enrichment and ocean acidification. Posidonia oceanica, an endemic seagrass species that dominates the Mediterranean Sea, achieves high abundances in seawater with relatively low concentrations of dissolved inorga...

Ocean warming and acidification may compromise calcifying species. However, their combined and long-term effects in bryozoans remain poorly understood although many species provide ecosystem services and goods. Here we examine the long-term effects of increased ocean warming and its interaction with acidification on populations of an encrusting and...

We investigated the structural and functional changes of the soft-bottom macrofaunal community following the improvement of a wastewater treatment-WWT plant. The macrofauna was collected at increasing distance from the main outfall in 2018, 2019, and 2021. Organic matter and nutrients were analysed in the water column near the outfalls to detect po...

The ability of coral populations to recover from disturbance depends on larval dispersion and recruitment. While ocean warming and acidification effects on adult corals are well documented, information on early life stages is comparatively scarce. Here, we investigate whether ocean warming and acidification can affect the larval and recruit develop...

Ocean warming and acidification may compromise calcifying species. However, their combined and long-term effects in bryozoans remain poorly understood. Here we compare the proportion of cover, skeletal structure and the microbiome composition of Pentapora ottomuelleriana population from a volcanic CO2 vent and a population living at ambient pH with...

Climate change is causing an increase in the frequency and intensity of marine heatwaves (MHWs) and mass mortality events (MMEs) of marine organisms are one of their main ecological impacts. Here, we show that during the 2015–2019 period, the Mediterranean Sea has experienced exceptional thermal conditions resulting in the onset of five consecutive...

The ability of coral populations to recover from disturbance depends on larval dispersion and recruitment. While ocean warming and acidification effects on adult corals are well documented, information on early life stages is comparatively scarce. Here, we investigate whether ocean warming and acidification can affect the larval and juvenile develo...

Understanding the resilience of temperate reefs to climate change requires exploring the recovery capacity of their habitat-forming species from recurrent marine heatwaves (MHWs). Here, we show that, in a Mediterranean highly enforced marine protected area established more than 40 years ago, habitat-forming octocoral populations that were first aff...

A major goal of global environmental change research is to determine the effects of the main drivers on species and communities, and whether organism’s biological responses persist and are maintained at levels that are similar to, or different from today. To this purpose, several studies were conducted on marine hydrothermal vents, unique extreme e...

Ocean acidification is perceived to be a major threat for many calcifying organisms, including scleractinian corals. Here, we investigate (1) whether past exposure to low pH environments associated with CO2 vents could increase corals tolerance to low pH and (2) whether zooxanthellate corals are more tolerant to low pH than azooxanthellate corals....

Ocean acidification is perceived to be a major threat for many calcifying organisms, including scleractinian corals. Here we investigate (1) whether past exposure to low pH environments associated with CO2 vents could increase corals tolerance to low pH and (2) whether zooxanthellate corals are more tolerant to low pH than azooxanthellate corals. T...

Ocean acidification (OA) may induce major shifts in the structure and function of coastal marine ecosystems. Studies in volcanic CO2 vents, where seawater is naturally acidified, have reported an overall simplification of fish assemblages structure, while some primary producers are likely to increase their biomass under elevated concentration of CO...

High pCO2 habitats and their populations provide an unparalleled opportunity to assess how species may survive under future ocean acidification conditions, and help to reveal the traits that confer tolerance. Here we utilize a unique CO2 vent system to study the effects of exposure to elevated pCO2 on trait‐shifts observed throughout natural popula...

RIASSUNTO-Vengono descritti sette sistemi di emissione sommersa di gas di origine vulcanica attorno all'isola d'Ischia (Golfo di Napoli): il Castello Aragonese (che è anche il geo-sito marino n. 20 della Regione Campania), la Vullatura, le Chiane del Lume, la grotta del Mago, la secca della Madonnina, la Marina di Lacco Ameno e la spiaggia di Chiai...

Coral microbiomes, the complex microbial communities associated with the different anatomic compartments of the coral, provide important functions for the host's survival, such as nutrient cycling at the host's surface, prevention of pathogens colonization, and promotion of nutrient uptake. Microbiomes are generally referred to as plastic entities,...

Anthropogenic climate change, and global warming in particular, has strong and increasing impacts on marine ecosystems (Poloczanska et al., 2013; Halpern et al., 2015; Smale et al., 2019). The Mediterranean Sea is considered a marine biodiversity hotspot contributing to more than 7% of world’s marine biodiversity including a high percentage of ende...

L 'origine vulcanica di Ischia e la sua complessità geo-morfologi-ca, sia sopra che sotto il mare, fa sì che le relazioni tra geologia e bio-logia in questo territorio siano strette e imprescindibili per capire le pecu-liarità delle risorse naturalistiche ed ecologiche dei fondali marini attorno all'isola. Il vulcanismo attivo pregres-so dell'isola...

Declines in the abundance of long-lived and habitat forming species of continental shelves have attracted particular attention given their importance to ecosystem structure and function of marine habitats. The study of undisturbed habitats defined as “pristine areas” is essential to create a reference frame of natural habitats without human interv...

Declines in the abundance of long-lived and habitat-forming species on continental shelves have attracted particular attention given their importance to ecosystem structure and function of marine habitats. The study of undisturbed habitats defined as "pristine areas" is essential in creating a frame of reference for natural habitats free of human i...

The differential response of marine populations to climate change remains poorly understood. Here, we combine common garden thermotolerance experiments in aquaria and population genetics to disentangle the factors driving the population response to thermal stress in a temperate habitat-forming species: the octocoral Paramuricea clavata. Using eight...

Declines in the abundance of long-lived and habitat forming species of continental shelves have attracted particular attention given their importance to ecosystem structure and function of marine habitats. The study of undisturbed habitats defined as “pristine areas” is essential to create a reference frame of natural habitats without human interv...

Overexploitation leads to the ecological extinction of many oceanic species. The depletion of historical abundances of large animals, such as whales and sea turtles, is well known. However, the magnitude of the historical overfishing of exploited invertebrates is unclear. The lack of rigorous baseline data limits the implementation of efficient man...

Data on species diversity and structure in coralligenous outcrops dominated by Corallium rubrum are lacking. A hierarchical sampling including 3 localities and 9 sites covering more than 400 km of rocky coasts in NW Mediterranean, was designed to characterize the spatial variability of structure, composition and diversity of perennial species inhab...

It is generally a challenge to identify ecological drivers of Southern Ocean macrobenthic communities. Reasons are a lack of a unifying concept, the complexity of ecological relationships and the biological diversity. A catch-based macrobenthos study and a sea-bed imaging survey on acidians were carried out off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula...

The Southern Ocean ecosystem at the Antarctic Peninsula has steep natural environmental gradients, e.g. in terms of water masses and ice cover, and experiences regional above global average climate change. An ecological macroepibenthic survey was conducted in three ecoregions in the north-western Weddell Sea, on the continental shelf of the Antarct...

Benthic ecological surveys using standardized methods are crucial for assessing changes associated with several threats in the Southern Ocean. The acquisition of data on assemblage structure over a variety of spatial scales is important to understand the variation of biodiversity patterns. During the ANT XXIX/3 (PS81) expedition of RV Polarstern, t...

In the current global climate change scenario, stressors overlap in space and time, and knowledge on the effects of their interaction is highly needed to understand and predict the response and resilience of organisms. Corals, among many other benthic organisms, are affected by an increasing number of global change-related stressors including warmi...

Ocean acidification is receiving increasing attention because of its potential to affect marine ecosystems. Rare CO2 vents offer a unique opportunity to investigate the response of benthic ecosystems to acidification. However, the benthic habitats investigated so far are mainly found at very shallowwater (less than or equal to 5 m depth) and theref...

Coralligenous outcrops rank among the most important ecosystems in the Mediterranean Sea, primarily because of their biodiversity. Information on the spatial and temporal variability of the composition and structure of coralligenous assemblages is essentially lacking for most regions. We explored the variability of the biodiversity patterns of cora...

Understanding processes that contribute to a better comprehension of the population dynamics of long-lived species is critical for the maintenance and potential recovery of such species. Despite the abundance of soft corals in Mediterranean rocky reefs, little information exists on their life histories and reproductive patterns. In this study, we a...

T-MedNet initiative (www.t-mednet.org) is devoted to spread the acquisition of high resolution temperature series in Mediterranean coastal waters, as well as to facilitate data sharing and analysis. In the Mediterranean, shifts in species’ distribution and mass mortality events (MME) reported during the last decades have been related to significant...

Coralligenous outcrops are an important "hot spot" of Mediterranean biodiversity. Most of the benthic species inhabiting these outcrops are long-lived and slow-growing, thus making them especially vulnerable. The interaction between the climatic changes projected for the 21 st century and other ongoing human-induced stressors, presents a major chal...

Global change is one of the major concerns for the conservation of the rich biodiversity of coralligenous assemblages. In the Mediterranean Sea, there is a strong likelihood of increasing frequencies of mass mortality events linked to global warming and the spread of invasive species. Gorgonian forests, one of the most emblematic facies of corallig...

Cladocora caespitosa is the only zooxanthellate reef-building scleractinian coral endemic to the Mediterranean Sea. Today, living banks of this long-lived structural species appear to be restricted to few locations. The population of C. caespitosa in the Illa Grossa Bay (Columbretes Islands Marine Reserve, NW Mediterranean) has been studied and mon...

Knowledge about key demographic processes is required to understand and to predict the response of populations to environmental change. Recruitment is an essential process regulating population abundance and dynamics of many marine species. From the initial settlement of propagules to the first appearance in the population, algae are likely to expe...

Long-lived species are characterized by low recruitment and mortality. In these species, longevity buffers low recruitment, but when catastrophic disturbances alter mortality, recruitment becomes critical for population recovery. In this study, we assessed basic biological traits—recruitment, post-settlement growth, and the mortality of juvenile co...

Cladocora caespitosa is a colonial and symbiotic scleractinian coral endemic to the Mediterranean Sea, which is threatened by disturbances related to global change. To assess its recovery capacity from physically induced tissue injuries, one to three polyps from 46 colonies were collected at 15 m depth in the Columbretes Islands Marine Reserve (NW...

Current knowledge on the abundance and distribution patterns of different soft coral species is relatively limited when compared to other benthic suspension feeders such as gorgonians and hard coral species. To overcome this scarcity of information, the distribution patterns of the soft corals Alcyonium acaule and Alcyonium palmatum were investigat...

The mesophotic coralligenous outcrops dominated by Corallium rubrum are among the most diverse marine benthic communities in the Mediterranean. To assess the potential impacts of perturbations associated to global change on these communities robust baselines are urgently needed. Here, we analyzed decadal trends on composition and diversity indices...

The spatial distribution, density and reproductive ecology of Ainigmaptilon antarcticum was studied using samples (colonies) collected during the EASIZ (Ecology of the Antarctic Sea Ice Zone) cruises I, II, and III, (1996, 1998, and 2000). Samples were taken using Agassiz and bottom trawls between 150 and 600 m depth in conjunction with a Remotely...

Extreme events are rare, stochastic perturbations that can cause abrupt and dramatic ecological change within a short period of time relative to the lifespan of organisms. Studies over time provide exceptional opportunities to detect the effects of extreme climatic events and to measure their impacts by quantifying rates of change at population and...

Non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) based on the Bray-Curtis resemblance measure for species presence/absence data from 2006 to 2010. A 4- group model was obtained by SIMPROF analysis: Tascó Petit (2006–2010); Punta Salines (2008–2009), Medallot (2006–2010) and the pre-storm years of Carall Bernat (2006–2008); the immediate post-storm years...

Results of 2-way PERMANOVA analyses based on Euclidian distances for the cover of growth forms of sessile species. Pair-wise comparisons using permutations of the t-statistic for the factor Site and Site*BA (Before/After) effects are also indicated (DOCX)

Results of 2-way PERMANOVA based on Bray-Curtis dissimilarity for macrobenthic taxa. Pair-wise comparisons using permutations of the t-statistic for the factor Site and the interaction term Site*Before/After are also indicated. (DOCX)

Cover area (%) of the representative macrobenthic taxa before and after the physical disturbance generated by the storm. Boring (BOR), Cup (CUP), Encrusting algae (ENA), Encrusting (ENC), Massive (MAS), and Tree (TREE). (DOCX)

Results of 2-way PERMANOVA based on Euclidian distances for the number of species. Pair-wise comparisons using permutations of the t-statistic for the factor Site and Site*BA (Before/After) effects are also indicated. (DOCX)

Results of 2-way PERMANOVA analyses based on Euclidian distances for the cover area of the principal groups of sessile organisms and bare substrate. Pair-wise comparisons using permutations of the t-statistic for the factor Site and Site*BA (Before/After) effects are also indicated (DOCX)

The Southern Ocean ecosystem at the Antarctic Peninsula has steep natural environmental gradients, e.g. in terms of water masses and ice cover, and experiences regional above global average climate change. An ecological macroepibenthic survey was conducted in three ecoregions in the north-western Weddell Sea, on the continental shelf of the Antarct...

Ongoing sea temperature increase threatens reefs worldwide. In this study we experimentally examined for the first time the response of the early life stages of a long-lived structural gorgonian, the Mediterranean species Paramuricea clavata (Risso 1826), to the highest summer temperature recorded so far in the study area (25°C; the Medes Islands,...

Assesing the conservation status of mediterranean rocky benthic communities dominated by long-lived species.

T-MEDNET: a climatic network for large scale, high resolution and long term monitoring of mediterranean coastal waters