Xavier Salvador

Marine interstitial habitats (mesopsammon) have been understudied due to complications of exploring its millimetric and highly adapted organisms. The restrictive ecological conditions of this neglected habitat include faint light and a limited amount of space. These have forced its fauna, with gastropod molluscs as one of the most common groups, to...

The evolutionary relationships among genera within the nudibranch family Discodorididae remain poorly understood, with comprehensive molecular studies still largely absent. Discodoris, the most species-rich genus within this family, has historically represented a wastebasket taxon where species with ‘discodoridid’ morphology were placed. In this st...

Pteropods, holoplanktonic gastropods, play pivotal roles in marine ecosystems as integral components of food webs and carbon cycling. With global change threatening pelagic ecosystem equilibrium, conserving pteropod biodiversity is paramount. Here, we present the most extensive phylogenetic study of the order Pteropoda to date, utilizing a complete...

In the present study, a revision of the phylogeny and taxonomy of the family Dorididae is carried out focusing on the genus Doris Linnaeus, 1758. The type species D. verrucosa Linnaeus, 1758 and a blueish and yellow morphotype of D. ocelligera collected in different localities in the Mediterranean Sea and the NorthEast Atlantic were sequenced, as w...

Effective citizen engagement is generally accepted as one of the most important steps for the success of citizen science programs. However, there is a lack of a common theoretical framework for recruitment and most projects rely on intuition or trial-and-error to develop their engagement strategies. Effective citizen science engagement needs theore...

Citizen (or community) science has provided copious and valuable information about charismatic marine taxa such as heterobranch gastropods, thus contributing enormously to the known geographic distribution of many sea slug species. This study reports new records of elusive sea slugs in the coastal western Mediterranean (especially on the Catalan an...

This article presents the 63 species of seaslugs that have been observed in the Thau lagoon over the period 2008 to 2021. For each species, the authors have described the physiognomic characteristics, their status, their phenology and listed the habitats that are most often frequented. This compilation is intended to be educational and is therefore...

The Mediterranean Sea is a hotspot for biodiversity and endemic species (between 4 % and 18 % of known species are endemic, depending on the group), but this environment, favourable for native species, also favours exotic species. To ascertain how biodiversity has been impacted by intense human activity, we surveyed the marine life in the Barcelona...

The systematics of the gastropod clade Umbraculida, particularly the family Tylodinidae, has been a matter of debate in the Mediterranean Sea, with no comprehensive molecular assessment of its diversity until now. Several species and genera have been erected and synonymized in the course of the last two centuries and only two single species belongi...

Citizen science provides us with much information about charismatic taxa such as the opisthobranchs, thus contributing enormously to enlarging the geographic distribution of species. This study collects new records of elusive sea slugs and snails in the Western Mediterranean coast (especially in the Catalan coast and the French Mediterranean coast)...

Sea slugs in the broad sense (until recently called «opisthobranchs» and now within the Heterobranchia subclass of the Gastropoda), have aroused the interest of naturalists since they began to be studied by the end of the XVIII century. Their colorful and varied shapes make them very attractive to be studied and photographed. Numerous are the publi...

The marine cryptogenic species Aplysia dactylomela was recorded in the Mediterranean Sea in 2002 for the first time. Since then, this species has rapidly colonized the eastern Mediterranean, successfully establishing stable populations in the area. Aplysia dactylomela is a heterobranch mollusc found in the Atlantic Ocean, and commonly known as the...