Paola Parretti

Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre

Mapping the distribution and evaluating the impacts of marine non-indigenous species (NIS) are two fundamental tasks for management purposes, yet they are often time consuming and expensive. This case study focuses on the NIS gilthead seabream Sparus aurata escaped from offshore farms in Madeira Island in order to test an innovative, cost-efficient...

Current trends in the global climate facilitate the displacement of numerous marine species from their native distribution ranges to higher latitudes when facing warming conditions. In this work, we analyzed occurrences of a circumtropical reef fish, the spotfin burrfish, Chilomycterus reticulatus (Linnaeus, 1958), in the Madeira Archipelago (NE At...

Introduction Anthropogenic litter on the sea surface, beaches and seafloor has been significantly increasing over recent decades (Galgani et al. 2015). In present days, marine litter is worldwide distributed, and the Atlantic Island of Madeira is no exception (Álvarez et al. 2020). This accumulation of litter in the ocean is severely affecting oce...

Aim DNA metabarcoding has great potential to improve biomonitoring in island's marine ecosystems, which are highly vulnerable to global change and non-indigenous species (NIS) introductions. However, the depth and accuracy of the taxonomic identifications are mainly dependent on reference libraries containing representative and reliable sequences f...

The threat posed by invasive non-native species worldwide requires a global approach to identify which introduced species are likely to pose an elevated risk of impact to native species and ecosystems. To inform policy, stakeholders and management decisions on global threats to aquatic ecosystems, 195 assessors representing 120 risk assessment area...

To evaluate the impact of successful invasions of marine ecosystems by non- indigenous species (NIS) in a future climate change scenario, we analysed how an increase in temperature may affect biotic interactions between resident species and newcomers. In this context, we examined the effect of temperature on interference competition (i.e. displacem...

What is the status of DNA library?

The detection of marine non-indigenous species (NIS) continues to increase worldwide, and this is also the case in the Portuguese islands of the Azores and Madeira. Considering that the major vector of NIS introductions in these archipelagos is marine traffic and given the absence of legislation on hull biofouling management, the number of NIS intr...

A key aspect for a successful management of marine non-indigenous species (NIS) is the cooperation with local stakeholders. In this study we assessed stakeholders’ baseline knowledge and perceptions on marine NIS fore- seeing support for their management in the Azores and Madeira archipelagos (Portugal). Survey questionnaires were designed to asses...

The green algae C. webbiana (Figure 12.1) was first collected in Faial in 2002. As it was rare and unfamiliar, no special attention was given. Only in 2005, after a significant increase in the total area it covered, a research plan to investigate its biology and ecology was implemented (Amat et al., 2008). Even though this species is not considere...

a b s t r a c t In recent years increasing knowledge has been accumulated on seamounts ecology; however their sedimentary environments and associated biological communities remain largely understudied. In this study we investigated quantity and biochemical composition of organic matter and macrofaunal diversity in sediments of the Condor Seamount (...