Macrofaunal communities in the Gioia Canyon (Southern Tyrrhenian Sea, Italy)

Submarine canyons play pivotal roles in the physical, biological and ecological processes of coastal areas, especially in closed or semi-closed basins as the Mediterranean Sea, influencing the biodiversity and the abundance of the benthic fauna. On February 2013, during the Tyrrhenian Gravity Flows (TyGraF) campaign, samples have been collected along the Gioia Canyon Basin (Italy) with the aim to describe the taxonomical composition and the abundances of the macrobenthic assemblages, filling the gap of knowledge in this area. A total of 93 taxa were identified, and the Annelida was the phylum with the highest number of specimens and most diversified (46 taxa). The polychaetes Sternaspis scutata, Prionospio cirrifera and Monticellina sp., the bivalves Thyasira sp.1 and Saccella commutata and the amphipods belonging to the genera Ampelisca and Harpinia showed the highest densities in the studied area; however, results suggest low values of the abundances of the macrobenthos if compared with those generally reported for other canyons, both inside and outside the Mediterranean Sea. The marine biotic index (AMBI) highlights that the canyon system and the surrounded area were slightly disturbed and characterized by a high percentage of tolerant taxa. This study is the first baseline for future analyses of the macrobenthic communities of this area

An environmental assessment of risk in achieving good environmental status to support regional prioritisation of management in Europe

The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) aims to achieve Good Environmental Status (GES) in Europe's Seas. The requirement for regional sea authorities to identify and prioritise issues for management has meant that standardized methods to assess the current level of departure from GES are needed. The methodology presented here provides a means by which existing information describing the status of ecosystem components of a regional sea can be used to determine the effort required to achieve GES. A risk assessment framework was developed to score departure from GES for 10 out of the 11 GES descriptors, based on proposed definitions of 'good' status, and current knowledge of environmental status in each of the four regional seas (North-East Atlantic, Mediterranean Sea, Baltic Sea and Black Sea). This provides an approach for regional evaluation of environmental issues and national prioritisation of conservation objectives. Departure from GES definitions is described as 'high', 'moderate' or low' and the implications for management options and national policy decisions are discussed. While the criteria used in this study were developed specifically for application toward MSFD objectives, with modification the approach could be applied to evaluate other high-level social, economic or environmental objectives. Crown Copyright (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

METIS-II: Machine Translation for Low Resource Languages

In this paper we describe a machine translation prototype in which we use only minimal resources for both the source and the target language. A shallow source language analysis, combined with a translation dictionary and a mapping system of source language phenomena into the target language and a target language corpus for generation are all the resources needed in the described system. Several approaches are presented. 1

The EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 : opportunities and challenges on the path towards biodiversity recovery

The European Union (EU) has committed to an ambitious biodiversity recovery plan in its Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and the Green Deal. These policies aim to halt biodiversity loss and move towards sustainable development, focusing on restoring degraded habitats, extending the network of protected areas (PAs), and improving the effectiveness of management, governance, and funding. The achievement of conservation goals must be founded on understanding past successes and failures. Here, we summarise the strengths and weaknesses of past EU biodiversity conservation policies and practices and explore future opportunities and challenges. We focus on four main aspects: i) coordination among and within the EU Member States, ii) integration of biodiversity conservation into socio-economic sectors, iii) adequacy and sufficiency of funds, and iv) governance and stakeholder participation.Whilst past conservation efforts have benefitted from common rules across the EU and funding mechanisms, they have failed at operationalizing coordination within and across the Member States, integrating biodiversity conservation into other sectoral policies, adequately funding and effectively enforcing management, and facilitating stakeholder participation in decision-making. Future biodiversity conservation would benefit from an extended and better-managed network of PAs, additional novel funding opportunities, including the private sector, and enhanced co-governance. However, it will be critical to find sustainable solutions to potential conflicts between conservation goals and other socio-economic objectives and to resolve inconsistencies across sectoral policies

An operational framework to assess the value of fisheries restricted areas for marine conservation

This work is part of the first author's PhD Thesis, conducted at the Department of Marine Science of the University of the Aegean. It is a contribution to the Research Projects “PROTOMEDEA - Towards the establishment of Marine Protected Area Networks in the Eastern Mediterranean”.-- 12 pages, 3 figures, 6 tables, supplementary dataAn operational framework to assess the value of fisheries restricted areas (FRAs) for marine conservation was developed. Such a framework contributes to the wider concept of considering other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs), as complementing conservation efforts and substantially contributing to effectively and equitably achieving Aichi biodiversity Target 11. A tailor-made multi-criteria decision analysis was designed and applied, for potential OECMs to be carefully assessed on a case-by-case basis and categorized according to their effectiveness in terms of contributing to marine biodiversity conservation. The official documentation and guidance provided by the IUCN were fully respected and made operational, providing a paradigm to managers and decision makers for assessing the contribution of FRAs to marine conservation under the OECM concept. The study also constitutes a review of the conservation status of the Aegean Sea and provides scientific documentation to the managers and decision makers in the area to address spatial conservation targets. By considering Natura 2000 sites as effective marine protected areas (MPAs), the Aichi Target 11 is attained (14.94%) at national level (i.e. within the Greek territorial waters). At ecoregional level (i.e. including international waters of the Aegean Sea) the target is not achieved (6.66%). It is proposed that, by adding all effective FRAs and a number of less effective FRAs, under the condition of increasing their effectiveness for conservation, to the network of MPAs in the area and designating them as OECMs, the conservation target can be attained also at ecoregional levelIt is a contribution to the Research Projects “PROTOMEDEA - Towards the establishment of Marine Protected Area Networks in the Eastern Mediterranean”, supported by DG for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries of the European Commission, under Grant Agreement SI2.721917 and “MARISCA - ΜΑRItime Spatial planning for the protection and Conservation of the biodiversity in the Aegean Sea”, co-funded by the European Economic Area Financial Mechanism, (EEA FM 2009–2014) and the Public Investments Program (PIP)Peer Reviewe

Polytraits: A database on biological traits of marine polychaetes

The study of ecosystem functioning - the role which organisms play in an ecosystem - is becoming increasingly important in marine ecological research. The functional structure of a community can be represented by a set of functional traits assigned to behavioural, reproductive and morphological characteristics. The collection of these traits from the literature is however a laborious and time-consuming process, and gaps of knowledge and restricted availability of literature are a common problem. Trait data are not yet readily being shared by research communities, and even if they are, a lack of trait data repositories and standards for data formats leads to the publication of trait information in forms which cannot be processed by computers. This paper describes Polytraits (http:// polytraits.lifewatchgreece.eu), a database on biological traits of marine polychaetes (bristle worms, Polychaeta: Annelida). At present, the database contains almost 20,000 records on morphological, behavioural and reproductive characteristics of more than 1,000 marine polychaete species, all referenced by literature sources. All data can be freely accessed through the project website in different ways and formats, both human-readable and machine-readable, and have been submitted to the Encyclopedia of Life for archival and integration with trait information from other sources. © Faulwetter S et al

Resistance of polychaete species and trait patterns to simulated species loss in coastal lagoons

The loss of species is known to have negative impacts on the integrity of ecosystems, but the details of this relationship are still far from being fully understood. This study investigates how the distribution patterns of polychaete species and their associated biological trait patterns in six Mediterranean coastal lagoons change under computationally simulated scenarios of random species loss. Species were progressively removed from the full polychaete assemblage and the similarity between the full assemblage and the reduced matrices of both species and trait patterns was calculated. The results indicate the magnitude of changes that might follow species loss in the real world, and allow consideration of the resistance of the system's functional capacity to loss of species, expressed through the species' biological traits as an approximation to functioning. Comparisons were made between the changes in the distribution of species and of traits, as well as between the six different lagoons. While the change of species and trait patterns was strongly correlated within most lagoons, different lagoons showed distinctly different patterns. In disturbed lagoons, the dominance of one or few species was the major driver for the observed patterns and the loss of these species caused extreme changes. Less disturbed lagoons were less susceptible to extreme changes and had a greater resistance towards species loss. Species richness appears to be less important for the ability of the lagoons to buffer changes, instead the initial composition of the assemblage and the identity of the lost species determine the response of the system and our ability to predict changes of the assemblage's functional potential. © 2014 Elsevier B.V