MORRI C.

Two severe heat waves triggered coral bleaching and mass mortality in the Maldives in 1998 and 2016. Analysis of live coral cover data from 1997 to 2019 in shallow (5 m depth) reefs of the Maldives showed that the 1998 heat wave caused more than 90% of coral mortality leaving only 6.8 ± 0.3% of survived corals in all the shallow reefs...

Global warming is facilitating the poleward range expansion of plant and animal species. In the Mediterranean Sea, the concurrent temperature increase and abundance of (sub)tropical non-indigenous species (NIS) is leading to the so-called 'tropicalization' of the Mediterranean Sea, which is dramatically evident in the south-eastern sectors of...

Understanding which drivers cause diversity patterns is a key issue in conservation. Here we applied a spatially explicit model to predict marine benthic diversity patterns according to environmental factors in the NW Mediterranean Sea. While most conservation-oriented diversity studies consider species richness only and neglect equitability,...

Biotic homogenization is an expected effect of biological invasions. Invasive alien species typically show great adaptability to a wide range of environmental conditions and may expand into different habitats, thus reducing the dissimilarity among the recipient communities. We tested this assumption by analyzing a comprehensive database (78...

Shallow hydrothermal vents emit warm water, carbon dioxide, toxic chemicals, nutrients and reduced compounds that altogether mimic climate and human impacts, and are therefore considered as 'natural laboratories' at which can be investigated the effects of these stressors on marine ecosystems. One of the effects more thoroughly investigated is...

The Serpulidae are a large family of sedentary polychaetes, characterized by a calcareous habitation tube, which they cannot leave. The calcium carbonate tube is in the form of both aragonite and calcite, in fairly constant ratio for each taxon. Tubes are cemented firmly to any hard substrate (in only few species tubes are free). Although in...

Marine caves are unique and vulnerable habitats threatened by multiple global and local pressures. Changes in the sessile epibenthic community of the Grotta Azzurra of Capo Palinuro (Salerno, Italy) during the last 26 years have been evaluated using growth forms and trophic guilds as non-taxonomic descriptors, informative of the structure and...

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Seawater warming is affecting corals worldwide. Mass mortality events are increasingly frequent, and the bioconstruction potential of coral reefs is jeopardized. Revisiting sites surveyed in the past may represent a valuable tool to better understand the health state and ongoing trend of coral reefs. In the Mediterranean Sea the only...

Seawater warming is impacting marine ecosystems, but proper evaluation of change requires the availability of long-term biological data series. Mesco Reef (Ligurian Sea, Italy) offers one of the longest Mediterranean data series on sessile epibenthic communities, based on underwater photographic surveys. Photographs taken in four stations...

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Biotic indices are major tools recommended by the European Directives for assessing the ecological status of marine coastal ecosystems such as Posidonia oceanica meadows. Nevertheless, the multitude of available metrics commonly adopted in the P. oceanica monitoring often provide diverging responses about the health status of the habitat. In...

The epiphytes of seagrass leaves constitute a peculiar community, comprised of a number of species specialized for this living substrate. Several studies report on the response of epiphytes to different pressures but no in-formation exists about the effects of summer heatwaves, which have become frequent events in the last decades. This paper...

Posidonia oceanica (L.) Delile is an endemic Mediterranean seagrass and a key species of coastal marine ecosystems listed among the priority habitats in the European Directive 92/43 / EEC. P. oceanica is a good biological indicator to define the quality of coastal marine ecosystem, because its high sensitivity to environmental conditions...

The global increase in seawater temperature is causing irreparable damages to coral reefs all over the world. Frequency of coral bleaching episodes and mass mortality is increasing and coral reefs have not enough time to recover after these impacts. The present study concerns this phenomenon in the context of the Maldives. In this scenario,...

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Coralligenous reefs represent one of the most important coastal ecosystems of the Mediterranean Sea, and their ecological quality must be assessed under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive to evaluate seafloor integrity. An effective standardized monitoring protocol is urgently needed in order to compare data at the Mediterranean scale and...

Climate change is affecting rocky reef ecosystems in a multitude of ways at global scale. During summer 2018, the rocky reef communities of Portofino Marine Protected Area (MPA) (NW Mediterranean) were affected by thermal anomalies, a mucilaginous event, and the seasonal expansion of Caulerpa cylindracea. Moreover, a severe storm occurred on 29...

Blue holes are vertical water-filled openings in carbonate rock that exhibit complex morphology, ecology, and water chemistry. In this study, macroscopic microbial mat structures found in complete anoxic conditions in the Faanu Mudugau Blue Hole (Maldives) were studied by metagenomic methods. Such communities have likely been evolutionary...