0000000000162371
AUTHOR
Fulvio Garibaldi
Sometimes Sperm Whales (Physeter macrocephalus) Cannot Find Their Way Back to the High Seas: A Multidisciplinary Study on a Mass Stranding
BackgroundMass strandings of sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) remain peculiar and rather unexplained events, which rarely occur in the Mediterranean Sea. Solar cycles and related changes in the geomagnetic field, variations in water temperature and weather conditions, coast geographical features and human activities have been proposed as possible causes. In December 2009, a pod of seven male sperm whales stranded along the Adriatic coast of Southern Italy. This is the sixth instance from 1555 in this basin.Methodology/principal findingsComplete necropsies were performed on three whales whose bodies were in good condition, carrying out on sampled tissues histopathology, virology, bacter…
MEDLEM database, a data collection on large Elasmobranchs in the Mediterranean and Black seas
The Mediterranean Large Elasmobranchs Monitoring (MEDLEM) database contains more than 3,000 records (with more than 4,000 individuals) of large elasmobranch species from 21 different countries around the Mediterranean and Black seas, observed from 1666 to 2017. The principal species included in the archive are the devil ray (1,868 individuals), the basking shark (935 individuals), the blue shark (622 individuals), and the great white shark (342 individuals). In the last decades, other species such as the thresher shark (187 individuals), the shortfin mako (180 individuals), and the spiny butterfly ray (138) were reported with increasing frequency. This was possibly due to increased public a…
Pliocene colonization of the Mediterranean by Great White Shark inferred from fossil records, historical jaws, phylogeographic and divergence time analyses
Aim: Determine the evolutionary origin of the heretofore poorly characterized contemporary Great White Shark (GWS; Carcharodon carcharias) of the Mediterranean Sea, using phylogenetic and dispersal vicariance analyses to trace back its global palaeo-migration pattern. Location: Mediterranean Sea. Taxon: Carcharodon carcharias. Methods: We have built the largest mitochondrial DNA control region (CR) sequence dataset for the Mediterranean GWS from referenced historical jaws spanning the 19th and 20th centuries. Mediterranean and global GWS CR sequences were analysed for genetic diversity, phylogenetic relationships and divergence time. A Bayes factor approach was used to assess two scenarios …
Global-Scale Environmental Niche and Habitat of Blue Shark (Prionace glauca) by Size and Sex: A Pivotal Step to Improving Stock Management
25 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables, supplementary material https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2022.828412/full#supplementary-material.-- Data Availability Statement: The blue shark habitat data are available on the JRC Data Catalogue (https://data.jrc.ec.europa.eu/dataset?q=fish%20habitat) (or upon request) and habitat maps are available online (https://fishreg.jrc.ec.europa.eu/web/fish-habitat/habitatmapping). Chlorophyll-a data are available online (https://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi/l3). The abiotic environmental and mesopelagic micronekton data are available online (https://marine.copernicus.eu/access-data).