Simone Libralato

• PhD
• Senior Researcher at National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics

Biological invasions are a major threat to biodiversity in the Neotropical region. However, few studies have evaluated the mechanisms underlying the long-term establishment of fish propagules in aquatic environments. Here, we associated fish biomass, species richness, and proportion of non-native species (contamination index) to quantify propagule...

This deliverable contains a comprehensive evaluation of selected ecosystem services provided by ocean ecosystems under critical pressures based on research conducted in Task 3.2 Socio-cultural and economic valuation of ecosystem services. CMCC evaluated provisioning and other services linked to fishery, aquaculture, tourism and bio-prospecting acti...

Predicting the ocean state in a reliable and interoperable way, while ensuring high-quality products, requires forecasting systems that synergistically combine science-based methodologies with advanced technologies for timely, user-oriented solutions. Achieving this objective necessitates the adoption of best practices when implementing ocean forec...

This study uses Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) vessel detections and Automatic Identification System (AIS) to predict trawl fishing intensity and distribution of fishing activity in areas where public AIS data are not available. By processing SAR data, considering spatial and temporal autocorrelation, and building a General Additive Model, a statis...

Biological invasions are a major threat to biodiversity in species-rich regions. Therefore, it is important to understand mechanisms behind the long-term establishment of non-native fish species in aquatic environments in the Neotropical region. Here, we associated fish biomass, species richness, and the proportion of non-native species (contaminat...

A collection of papers presented at the 4th International Conference on Community Ecology. (4th ComEc, Trieste, Italy) is presented.

The Bonifacio Straits Natural Reserve (BSNR) is a Mediterranean Marine Protected Area (MPA) located in Corsica, characterized by rocky coasts, steep bathymetry, and regulated exploitation of marine resources. In this study, we updated the BSNR Ecopath model from 2010, providing a re-evaluation of the MPA's impact 13 years after the reserve's establ...

Fishing has significant trophodynamic impacts on marine communities, including reductions in the mean trophic position (TP) of the ecosystem resulting from a decrease in the abundance and size of species and individuals with high TPs. This study demonstrates the erosion of fish TP, an additional process that results in lower TP of individuals of a...

Predicting range shifts of marine species under different CO2 emission scenarios is of paramount importance to understand spatial potential changes in a context of climate change and to ensure appropriate management, in particular in areas where resources are critical to fisheries. Important tools which use environmental variables to infer range li...

In December 2017, the United Nation decided to proclaim the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development for the 10-year period beginning on 1 January 2021.

The European Union Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) recognises that maintaining marine food-webs in Good Environmental Status (GES) is fundamental to ensure the long-term provision of essential ecosystem goods and services. However, operationalising food-web assessments is challenging due to difficulties in i) implementing simple but comp...

Spatial fisheries management is widely used to reduce overfishing, rebuild stocks, and protect biodiversity. However, the effectiveness and optimization of spatial measures depend on accurately identifying ecologically meaningful areas, which can be difficult in mixed fisheries. To apply a method generally to a range of target species, we developed...

Plankton communities are the foundation of marine food webs and have a large effect on the dynamics of entire ecosystems. Changes in physicochemical factors strongly influence planktonic organisms and their turnover rates, making their communities useful for monitoring ecosystem health. We studied and compared the planktonic food webs of Palude del...

Trade-offs related to ecosystem resilience are here quantified by comparing direct impacts and net effects using fishing pressures on marine ecosystems as controlled perturbations. Results highlight that trade-offs appear in most of cases when evaluated through ecosystem models and are independent from model complexity. Trade-offs showed a dome-sha...

We studied the macrobenthic invertebrate biomass (B), production (P), productivity (P/B̅-ratio), and transfer efficiency (TE) influenced by sewage effluents discharge in a diffusion zone. Our results indicated a clear distribution pattern of macrofauna communities along the sewage discharge gradient where biological factors (B, P, P/B̅, and TE) wer...

Disentangling the effects of mixed fisheries and climate change across entire food-webs requires a description of ecosystems using tools that can quantify interactive effects as well as bio-economic aspects. A calibrated dynamic model for the Sicily Channel food web, made up of 72 functional groups and including 13 fleet segments, was developed. A...

Ecosystem models are important tools for the implementation of Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management (EBFM), especially in highly exploited ecosystems affected by climate change, such as the Mediterranean Sea. Herein, we present the development of an Ecopath ecosystem model for the North Aegean Sea (Eastern Mediterranean) in the early 1990s, as well...

Benthic-pelagic coupling (BPC) is a combination of downward (from pelagic to benthic) and upward (from benthic to pelagic) flows of organic matter and nutrients mediated by trophic interactions in the food web. Hydrological changes in marine ecosystems affect BPC patterns at several temporal and spatial scales. Thus, a food-web perspective help to...

Report on the results from the application of scenarios for fisheries management in the Adriatic Region

This paper presents an analysis of the effect of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus pandemic and related restrictive measures on the activity of the Italian fleet of trawlers, which represents one of the most important fisheries in the Mediterranean Sea. We integrated multiple sources of information including: (1) Fleet activity data from Vessel Monitoring Sys...

The Northern Adriatic Sea (FAO Geographical Sub-Area 17) is one of the most productive fishing areas of the Mediterranean Sea and it includes a broad diversity of habitats. In the Northern Adriatic basin, the Pomo Pit (200-273 m of depth) is one of the most important areas of aggregation for some demersal stocks shared in the Adriatic Sea and it is...

Examining marine ecosystems in a distinct way can produce new ecological, theoretical and applied insights. The common “S” and “hockey stick” -shaped curves, which result from examining the cumulative biomass and trophic level and the cumulative production and cumulative biomass curves of marine ecosystems, have strong potential to elucidate the me...

The implementation of management measures for improving the ecological status within an Ecosystem Based Management approach represents one the of the main challenges in coastal and transitional water environments. In general terms, ecological status and ecosystem functioning are expected to be positively associated, being good ecological processes...

Ocean acidification (OA) is expected to impact habitat-forming species (HFS), with cascading effects on the whole marine ecosystem and related services that are seldom quantified. Here, the changes in HFSs biomass due to OA are modeled using a food web ecosystem model, and the trophic and non-trophic cascading effects on the marine community are in...

Networks of trophic interactions provide a lot of information on the functioning of marine ecosystems. Beyond feeding habits, three additional traits (mobility, size, and habitat) of various organisms can complement this trophic view. The combination of traits and food web positions are studied here on a large food web database. The aim is a better...

The presence of invasive species in the Mediterranean Sea is much higher than in other European seas, and understanding the reasons behind the range expansion of this invasive species is important for minimising any possible impacts to the already highly pressurised Mediterranean marine ecosystem. In this work, a brief description of sightings of t...

Summary: https://marine.copernicus.eu/news/ocean-state-report-5-summary-now-available Full report: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1755876X.2021.1946240

Improved access to markets by small-scale fisheries (SSF), as called by Sustainable Development Goal 14b and other global and Mediterranean policy documents, is impeded by the existing organisation of value chains and market structures, which are typically antagonistic to the nature of SSF. This article analyses the markets in the Mediterranean to...

Eutrophication is one of the most important anthropogenic pressures impacting coastal seas. In Europe, several legislations and management measures have been implemented to halt nutrient overloading in marine ecosystems. This study evaluates the impact of freshwater nutrient control measures on higher trophic levels (HTL) in European marine ecosyst...

The exploitation of fishery resources acts as a driving force on cetaceans both directly, by determining their fishing mortality or injury as by-catch species, and indirectly, through the lowering the availability of their prey. This competitive overlap between fishing and cetaceans often results in inadequate solutions so that in some cases there...

In the original publication of the article, the given name and surname of the authors are inverted in the author’s affiliation and in the citation of the article.

The maintenance of natural capital and the stability of regulation services of marine ecosystems has proved to be linked to the conservation of key species supporting the ecosystems function. Chondrichthyes are key top-predators and their removal from marine ecosystems due to fishing exploitation could lead to changes in species interactions and bi...

The ecological roles of the species in the food web are studied through the Ecopath with Ecosim modelling approach. In this modelling approach, the food web is described by means of functional groups, each representing a species, a life stage of a species, or a group of species with similar trophic, ecological and physiological features. Links betw...

This publication explores the potential of markets to revive and support a socially, economically and environmentally sustainable small-scale fishing sector. Collectively, the LabMAF project and this report aim to point out a gap between the large-scale fisheries industry in Mediterranean countries, and the local and small-scale market for more ref...

FAIRSEA (ID 10046951) “Fisheries in the AdriatIc Region - a Shared Ecosystem Approach”

Aim The Northern-Central Adriatic Sea is one of the most productive areas of the Mediterranean Sea including a broad diversity of habitats. Within this basin, the Pomo Pit is one of the most important areas of aggregation and is an important spawning/nursery area in the Northern and Central Adriatic for the stock of European hake (Merluccius merluc...

A. Landings missing data were reconstructed B. Fishing capacity was reconstructed C. Wind function was calculated to estimate fishing effort from landings per unit of capacity (LPUC) and wind intensity (m/s) D. Incoming biomass of anchovy (above) and sardine (below) in the Gulf of Trieste was estimated E. The correlation between biomass estimate (m...

Marine capture fisheries in African Large Marine Ecosystems (LMEs) are important from economic, cultural, social, and food provision perspectives. These African fisheries have a long history of high exploitation in the context of data-limited situations. There is a growing, global movement (both in terms of management requirements and scientific ef...

Species are characterized by physiological and behavioral plasticity, which is part of their response to environmental shifts. Nonetheless, the collective response of ecological communities to environmental shifts cannot be predicted from the simple sum of individual species responses, since co‐existing species are deeply entangled in interaction n...

Implementing the Ecosystem Approach in marine ecosystems is moving from preliminary steps‐‐ dedicated to defining the optimal features for indicators and developing efficient indicator frameworks‐‐ towards an operational phase where multi‐sector marine management decisions are executed using this information. Within this operational context, emerge...

The ecosystem functioning of two marine food webs covering the north‐eastern (Salento) and south‐western (Calabria) sectors of the North‐Western Ionian Sea (NWIS) (Central Mediterranean Sea) was investigated through a food‐web model. Data inputs covered a wide set of ecological information applied to 58 functional groups (FGs). The sum of consumpti...

There are several emergent properties useful as indicators of marine ecosystem status. Some of these are based on the cumulative trophic theory, which posits that biomass and production accumulate in repeatable and predictable patterns across trophic levels. These patterns result in a suite of curve parameters that can delineate when a marine ecosy...

Here we summarize the overarching issues that emerged from a workshop held to discuss scientific challenges and future directions on the use of numerical models to predict the amount, distribution and effects of plastic pollution on marine ecosystems. The need for multidisciplinary approaches, standardized protocols for plastic quantification and a...

Background: European hake (Merluccius merluccius) is a demersal fish widely distributed in the Mediterranean and it is one of the most economically important fish for this basin. It is a voracious predator of deep upper shelf slope communities currently characterised by growth overexploitation: the understanding of hake’s diet might support an ecos...

Understanding drivers of ecosystem structure and function is a pervasive goal in academic and applied research. We used 24 synthetic ecosystem-level indices derived from trophic models, and independently derived data for Net Primary Productivity, to investigate drivers of ecosystem structure and function for 43 marine ecosystems distributed in all...

Journal: Current Opinion in Systems Biology. Ecological trade-offs due to different perturbations are here quantified by comparing direct impacts and net effects using fishing pressures on marine ecosystems as controlled perturbations. Results highlight that trade-offs emerge in majority of cases when evaluated through multispecies models and are i...

Benthic—pelagic coupling plays a pivotal role in aquatic ecosystems but the effects of fishery driven interactions on its functioning has been largely overlooked. Disentangling the benthic—pelagic links including effects of mixed fisheries, however, needs sketching a whole description of ecosystem interactions using quantitative tools. A holistic f...

Input parameters and main outputs (in bold) of the food web model. For each functional group (FG) are detailed inputs: biomass (B; t km−2), production/biomass ratio (P/B; yr−1), consumption/biomass ratio (Q/B; yr−1); Landing and Discards are expressed in t km−2 year−1. Outputs: trophic level (TL), ecotrophic efficiency (EE; for most of the FG excep...

Modelling approach, balancing strategy and pedigree. (DOCX)

Matrix of diet used as input. Raw data across functional groups of predators in columns and preys in rows. (DOCX)

Mixed trophic impact matrix. Rows are impacting FGs and columns impacted FGs. (TIF)

Sources and references used for each functional group representing the Strait of Sicily food web model. Biomass (B); diet information used to build the diet matrix; production per unit of biomass (P/B); consumption per unit of biomass (Q/B). F = fishing mortality, M = natural mortality, Z = total mortality. (DOCX)

Ecological and fishery related indices across modelled Mediterranean ecosystems: Gulf of Gabes (Hattab et al. 2013), Catalan Sea (Coll et al. 2009_early 2000s), Adriatic Sea (Coll et al. 2007), Aegean Sea (Tsagarakis et al. 2010), Greek Ionian Sea (Moutopoulos et al. 2013), Mediterranean Sea (Piroddi et al. 2015_global). B total biomass (exluding d...

Summary of the diet matrix of the food web model. Proportion of preys (rows) in the diet of the predators (columns) in ranks. Fraction of import in the diet (fraction of energy assumed to be taken out of the system) are also indicated. (TIF)

European hake (Merluccius merluccius) is one of the most economically important fish for the Mediterranean Sea. It is an important predator of deep upper shelf slope communities currently characterized by growth overexploitation: the understanding of hake's diet might support next generation management tools. However, all current European hake diet...

This corrects the article DOI: 10.1038/sdata.2017.104.

An exploration of the structure of demersal and benthopelagic assemblages in the north-western Ionian Sea was carried out by means of a set of statistical analyses. Self-organising map (SOM) and clustering methods applied to 183 taxa and their biomass (kg km⁻²) provided the classification of 1288 experimental hauls exploring the bathymetric range 1...

The reformed Common Fisheries Policy [Regulation (EU) 1380/2013] introduces the obligation to land unwanted catches gradually from 2015 to 2019 with the aim to reduce discards. The ecological and economic consequences of this controversial regulation are evaluated here using an ecosystem model for the North-Eastern Adriatic Sea to quantify the long...

Using network analysis for making predictions about food web dynamics is one of the major challenges in systems ecology. Since there are several notoriously difficult methodological problems with food webs, only a comparative perspective can help. We study a standard database for trophic flow networks and analyse the correlation between structure a...

We have chosen the Strait of Sicily with the aim of investigating direct and indirect effects of fishing on marine food web by using an ecosystem model.

Historic data on biodiversity provide the context for present observations and allow studying long-term changes in marine populations. Here we present multiple datasets on fish and fisheries of the Adriatic Sea covering the last two centuries encompassing from qualitative observations to standardised scientific monitoring. The datasets consist of t...

Modern approaches to Ecosystem-Based Management and sustainable use of marine resources must account for the myriad of pressures (interspecies, human and environmental) affecting marine ecosystems. The network of feeding interactions between co-existing species and populations (food webs) are an important aspect of all marine ecosystems and biodive...

This review focuses on the recent data on Mediterranean fishing fleets and landings, results from stock assessments and ecosystem models to provide an overview of the multiple impacts of fishing exploitation in the different Mediterranean geographical sub-areas (GSAs). A fleet of about 73,000 vessels is widespread along the Mediterranean coasts. Ar...

In the Mediterranean Sea, structured and standardized monitoring programs of marine resources were set only in the last decades, so the analysis of changes in marine communities over longer time scale has to rely on other sources. In this work, we used seven decades (1945–2014) of disaggregated landings statistics for the Northern Adriatic Sea (Med...

Real food webs are characterized by complex set of interactions that are considered fundamental to keep the system stable as well as to provide resilience and resistance to perturbations. The complexity of food webs is intrinsically connected with the degree omnivory of a system, therefore omnivory provides a basis for defining existing and new ind...

European hake (Merluccius merluccius), is a demersal fish distributed from the North Sea and Atlantic to the Levantine Sea in the Mediterranean. It is an important predator of deep Mediterranean upper shelf slope communities currently characterised by growth overexploitation. M. merluccius adults feed mainly on fish and squids whereas the juveniles...