MOCCIA , Davide

Ecological theory predicts that heterogeneous habitats allow more species to co-exist in a given area, but to date, knowledge on relationships between habitat heterogeneity and biodiversity of coral forests in the outer shelf and upper slope along continental margins is rather limited. We investigated biodiversity of coral forests from 8 sites...

Association between habitat structuring organisms and other species has great relevance for ecosystem-based conservation measures. Those occurring in temperate areas, particularly in the upper portion of the continental margin, are mostly unknown or not properly understood because of the difficulty to discriminate co-occurrence and real...

Rocky pinnacles arising from soft bottoms of the circa-littoral zone may host oases of deepwater coral biodiversity: Engineer species that enhance ecosystems three-dimensional complexity often acting as shelter for associated fauna that can comprise commercially relevant species. Although variations in beta diversity of these coral oases were...