An Integrated Traits Resilience Assessment of Mediterranean fisheries landings

An increasing number of studies have been examining the functional configuration of biological communities or ecosystems using biological traits. Here, we investigated the temporal dynamics and resilience of the traits composition in Mediterranean fisheries landings over 31 years (1985–2015). We transcribed the FAO Mediterranean landings dataset for 101 marine species into a dataset of 23 traits related to the life cycle, distribution, ecology and behaviour. Mediterranean mean Sea Surface Temperature (SST) was evaluated as a potential driver of the traits composition. Trait dynamics were evaluated both individually and holistically by developing an Integrated Traits Resilience Assessment (ITRA). ITRA is a variation of the Integrated Resilience Assessment (IRA), a method to infer resilience dynamics and build stability landscapes of complex natural systems. Changes in landings trait dynamics were documented both for individual traits and for the entire traits ‘system’, and a relevant regime shift was detected in the second half of the 1990s. The traits system switched to higher optimal temperature, more summer spawning, shorter life span, smaller maximum size, shallower optimal depth and planktivorous diet. This shift was found to be a lagged discontinuous response to sea warming, which gradually eroded the resilience of the original state of the traits system, leading it into a new basin of attraction. The inclusion of ecological/response traits (related to environmental preferences) in our analyses indicates potential mechanisms that explain the observed shift, while changes in functional/effect traits indicate potential impacts on ecosystem functioning. Our findings suggest that changes in the Mediterranean ecosystems are evidently larger than previously thought, with profound implications for the management of this highly impacted sea. ​. © 2021 British Ecological Societ

New records of rare species in the Mediterranean Sea (October 2020)

This Collective Article presents information about 21 taxa belonging to seven Phyla (one Ochrophyta, one Porifera, three Cni-daria, two Arthropoda, three Mollusca, one Echinodermata, and ten Chordata) and extending from the western Mediterranean Sea to the Levantine Sea. The new records were reported from nine countries as follows: Spain: first records of three deep-sea species from the Blanes Canyon along the Catalan margin, namely the gorgonian Placogorgia coronata, the bivalve Acesta excavata, and the Azores rockling Gaidropsarus granti; Italy: first record of the mesopsammic nudibranch Embletonia pulchra from Ligurian shallow-waters; first record of the deep-sea carnivorous sponge Lycopodina hypogea from the north-central Tyrrhenian Sea, living in dense clusters over dead black corals; new records of the Portuguese man o’ war Physalia physalis from Sardinian and Sicilian waters; first Italian record of the large asteroid Coronaster briareus from the Ionian Sea; first record of the white grouper Epinephelus aeneus in the northernmost point of the Adriatic Sea; Croatia: first record of the gastropod Haliotis mykonosensis for the Adriatic Sea; Malta: new sightings of Physalia physalis from Maltese waters; Libya: first record of the sand crab Albunea carabus from two localities along the Libyan coast; Greece: first records of the deep-sea black coral Parantipathes larix from the eastern Mediterranean Sea; first verified record of the agujon needlefish Tylosurus imperialis in the Hellenic Ionian Sea; first confirmed record of the brown algae Treptacantha squarrosa in the eastern Mediterranean Sea; new records of three deep-sea fish species from the Aegean Sea, namely the bluntnose sixgill shark Hexanchus griseus, the Atlantic pomfret Brama brama, and the rudderfish Centrolophus niger; new record of the tripletail Lobotes surinamensis from Lesvos Island; new record of the shrimp Brachycarpus biunguiculatus from the gut content of the non-indigenous lionfish Pterois miles; Turkey: new record of the imperial blackfish Schedophilus ovalis from Turkish waters; Lebanon: first record of the slender sunfish Ranzania laevis, stranded along the Lebanese coast; Israel: new record, after about 60 years from the last catch, of the spotted dragonet Callionymus maculatus. Copyright © 2020 Mediterranean Marine Scienc