Search results for "Marine life"
showing 10 items of 10 documents
2018
Marine life of the Southern Ocean has been facing environmental changes and the direct impact of human activities during the past decades. Benthic communities have particularly been affected by such changes although we only slowly understand the effect of environmental changes on species physiology, biogeography, and distribution. Species distribution models (SDM) can help explore species geographic responses to main environmental changes. In this work, we modeled the distribution of four echinoid species with contrasting ecological niches. Models developed for [2005-2012] were projected to different time periods, and the magnitude of distribution range shifts was assessed for recent-past c…
Possible effects of global environmental changes on Antarctic benthos: a synthesis across five major taxa
2012
Because of the unique conditions that exist around the Antarctic continent, Southern Ocean (SO) ecosystems are very susceptible to the growing impact of global climate change and other anthropogenic influences. Consequently, there is an urgent need to understand how SO marine life will cope with expected future changes in the environment. Studies of Antarctic organisms have shown that individual species and higher taxa display different degrees of sensitivity to environmental shifts, making it difficult to predict overall community or ecosystem responses. This emphasizes the need for an improved understanding of the Antarctic benthic ecosystem response to global climate change using a multi…
First Assessment of Plasticizers in Marine Coastal Litter-Feeder Fauna in the Mediterranean Sea
2021
Micro and nanoplastics are harmful to marine life due to their high level of fragmentation and resistance to degradation. Over the past two decades, marine coastal sediment has shown an increasing amount of microplastics being a sort of trap for debris wastes or chemicals. In such an environment some species may be successful candidates to be used as monitors of environmental and health hazards and can be considered a mirror of threats of natural habitats. Such species play a key role in the food web of littoral systems since they are litter-feeders, and are prey for fishes or higher trophic level species. A preliminary investigation was conducted on five species of small-sized amphipod cru…
Volcanic CO2 seep geochemistry and use in understanding ocean acidification
2020
AbstractOcean acidification is one of the most dramatic effects of the massive atmospheric release of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution, although its effects on marine ecosystems are not well understood. Submarine volcanic hydrothermal fields have geochemical conditions that provide opportunities to characterise the effects of elevated levels of seawater CO2 on marine life in the field. Here, we review the geochemical aspects of shallow marine CO2-rich seeps worldwide, focusing on both gas composition and water chemistry. We then describe the geochemical effects of volcanic CO2 seepage on the overlying seawater column. We also present new g…
Distribution of sea urchins living near shallow water CO2 vents is dependent upon species acid-base and ion-regulatory abilities.
2013
To reduce the negative effect of climate change on Biodiversity, the use of geological CO2 sequestration has been proposed; however leakage from underwater storages may represent a risk to marine life. As extracellular homeostasis is important in determining species' ability to cope with elevated CO2, we investigated the acid-base and ion regulatory responses, as well as the density, of sea urchins living around CO2 vents at Vulcano, Italy. We conducted in situ transplantation and field-based laboratory exposures to different pCO2/pH regimes. Our results confirm that sea urchins have some ability to regulate their extracellular fluid under elevated pCO2. Furthermore, we show that even in cl…
Recreational fish feeding affects coastal fish behavior and increases frequency of predation on damselfish (Chromis chromis) nests
2006
Wildlife feeding has become an integral part of the range of activities offered to protected area visitors. In marine protected areas (MPAs), fish feeding may cause changes in the behavior, and thus the density and distribution, of coastal fish species. We evaluated spatial variability in human-positive fish behavior around the Ustica Island MPA (Italy) and the potential indirect effects of behavioral change on other species. Two mensurative experiments demonstrated that ca. 1/3 of the species present in fish-feeding areas exhibited human-positive behavior, losing instinctive fear in the presence of humans and encircling people in the water even when food was not provided. A manipulative ex…
Marine molecular biology : An emerging field of biological sciences
2007
An appreciation of the potential applications of molecular biology is of growing importance in many areas of life sciences, including marine biology. During the past two decades, the development of sophisticated molecular technologies and instruments for biomedical research has resulted in significant advances in the biological sciences. However, the value of molecular techniques for addressing problems in marine biology has only recently begun to be cherished. It has been proven that the exploitation of molecular biological techniques will allow difficult research questions about marine organisms and ocean processes to be addressed. Marine molecular biology is a discipline, which strives t…
A state of art on plastics in the oceans: Observation and Mitigation Methods
2019
Marine wildlife faces a growing number of threats across the globe, and the survival of many species and populations will be dependent on conservation action. The aim of this paper is a presentation of mitigation methods overview about plastics in the ocean, in fact plastic pollution is increasing and in order to mitigate this problem, technology might give the solution
Physical oceanography, sea-bed photographs and videos of benthos from the Weddell Sea taken with remote operated vehicle CHEROKEE during POLARSTERN c…
2010
The marine ecosystem on the eastern shelf of the Antarctic Peninsula was surveyed 5 and 12 years after the climate-induced collapse of the Larsen A and B ice shelves. An impoverished benthic fauna was discovered, that included deep-sea species presumed to be remnants from ice-covered conditions. The current structure of various ecosystem components appears to result from extremely different response rates to the change from an oligotrophic sub-ice-shelf ecosystem to a productive shelf ecosystem. Meiobenthic communities remained impoverished only inside the embayments. On local scales, macro- and mega-epibenthic diversity was generally low, with pioneer species and typical Antarctic megabent…
Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of Wave Energy Converter (WEC)
2015
The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is an environmental management instrument implemented worldwide. In the last years the development of Wave Energy Converter (WEC) influenced environmental research to quantify impacts on marine life. In this paper we present a case study of EIA: a real application and study of device installed in Tirren Sea (near Castellammare — Sicily).