114 research outputs found
The arrival of a second ‘Lessepsian sprinter’? A first record of the red cornetfish Fistularia petimba in the Eastern Mediterranean
Here we document the first occurrence of the red cornetfish Fistularia petimba in the Levantine Basin. This species identity has been confirmed using morphological and molecular tools, and is presented here with simplified illustrations for accurate future identification. This report voices a concern regarding another blitz invasion of a cornetfish into the Mediterranean, following its Lessepsian sprinter congeneric, F. commersonii, one of the most efficacious invaders of the Mediterranean Sea. The wide intra-specific genetic distances found between sympatric F. petimba specimens in the available literature resources may also demonstrate the presence of cryptic diversity within this taxon
OVI Traces Photoionized Streams With Collisionally Ionized Boundaries in Cosmological Simulations of Massive Galaxies
We analyse the distribution and origin of OVI in the Circumgalactic Medium
(CGM) of dark-matter haloes of M at in the VELA
cosmological zoom-in simulations. We find that the OVI in the inflowing cold
streams is primarily photoionized, while in the bulk volume it is primarily
collisionally ionized. The photoionized component dominates the observed column
density at large impact parameters (), while the
collisionally ionized component dominates closer in. We find that most of the
collisional OVI, by mass, resides in the relatively thin boundaries of the
photoionized streams. We discuss how the results are in agreement with analytic
predictions of stream and boundary properties, and their compatibility with
observations. This allows us to predict the profiles of OVI and other ions in
future CGM observations and provides a toy model for interpreting them.Comment: 22 pages, 16 figures, submitted to MNRA
Established non-indigenous species increased by 40% in 11 years in the Mediterranean Sea
With this corrigendum, the authors of Zenetos et al. (2022) wish to notify readers of a small number of omissions and corrections in the updated inventory of Mediterranean non-indigenous species (NIS), recently undertaken by them, and amend the total number of NIS reported in the Mediterranean until December 2021
The scientific payload of the Ultraviolet Transient Astronomy Satellite (ULTRASAT)
The Ultraviolet Transient Astronomy Satellite (ULTRASAT) is a space-borne
near UV telescope with an unprecedented large field of view (200 sq. deg.). The
mission, led by the Weizmann Institute of Science and the Israel Space Agency
in collaboration with DESY (Helmholtz association, Germany) and NASA (USA), is
fully funded and expected to be launched to a geostationary transfer orbit in
Q2/3 of 2025. With a grasp 300 times larger than GALEX, the most sensitive UV
satellite to date, ULTRASAT will revolutionize our understanding of the hot
transient universe, as well as of flaring galactic sources. We describe the
mission payload, the optical design and the choice of materials allowing us to
achieve a point spread function of ~10arcsec across the FoV, and the detector
assembly. We detail the mitigation techniques implemented to suppress
out-of-band flux and reduce stray light, detector properties including measured
quantum efficiency of scout (prototype) detectors, and expected performance
(limiting magnitude) for various objects.Comment: Presented in the SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 202
Bioinvasion impacts on biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human health in the Mediterranean Sea
Este artículo contiene 45 páginas, 20 figuras, 5 tablas.Biological invasions have become a defining feature of marine Mediterranean
ecosystems with significant impacts on biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human
health. We systematically reviewed the current knowledge on the impacts of marine
biological invasions in the Mediterranean Sea. We screened relevant literature and
applied a standardised framework that classifies mechanisms and magnitude of impacts
and type of evidence. Overall, 103 alien and cryptogenic species were analysed, 59 of
which were associated with both negative and positive impacts, 17 to only negative, and
13 to only positive; no impacts were found for 14 species. Evidence for most reported
impacts (52%) was of medium strength, but for 32% of impact reports evidence was
weak, based solely on expert judgement. Only 16% of the reported impacts were based
on experimental studies. Our assessment allowed us to create an inventory of 88 alien
and cryptogenic species from 16 different phyla with reported moderate to high
impacts. The ten worst invasive species in terms of reported negative impacts on
biodiversity include six algae, two fishes, and two molluscs, with the green alga Caulerpa
cylindracea ranking first. Negative impacts on biodiversity prevailed over positive ones.
Competition for resources, the creation of novel habitat through ecosystem engineering,
and predation were the primary reported mechanisms of negative effects. Most cases of
combined negative and positive impacts on biodiversity referred to community-level
modifications. Overall, more positive than negative impacts were reported on ecosystem
services, but this varied depending on the service. For human health, only negative
impacts were recorded. Substantial variation was found among Mediterranean ecoregions
in terms of mechanisms of impact and the taxonomic identity of impacting species.
There was no evidence that the magnitude of impact increases with residence time.
Holistic approaches and experimental research constitute the way forward to better
understanding and managing biological invasions.The present study was supported by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation
(H.F.R.I.) under the “First Call for H.F.R.I. Research Projects to support Faculty members and
Researchers and the procurement of high-cost research equipment grant” (Project ALAS –
“ALiens in the Aegean – a Sea under siege”; Project Number: HFRI-FM17-1597; Katsanevakis
et al. 2020b). FaCr was partially funded by the project PO FEAMP CAMPANIA 2014-2020
(DRD n.35 of 15th March 2018). XT obtained partial funding from project MARGECH
(PID2020-118550RB, MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) from the Spanish Government. AR
received grants from the University of Catania through “PiaCeRi-Piano Incentivi per la Ricerca
di Ateneo 2020–22 linea di intervento 2”.Peer reviewe
Are we ready to track climate-driven shifts in marine species across international boundaries? - A global survey of scientific bottom trawl data
Marine biota are redistributing at a rapid pace in response to climate change and shifting seascapes. While changes in fish populations and community structure threaten the sustainability of fisheries, our capacity to adapt by tracking and projecting marine species remains a challenge due to data discontinuities in biological observations, lack of data availability, and mismatch between data and real species distributions. To assess the extent of this challenge, we review the global status and accessibility of ongoing scientific bottom trawl surveys. In total, we gathered metadata for 283,925 samples from 95 surveys conducted regularly from 2001 to 2019. We identified that 59% of the metadata collected are not publicly available, highlighting that the availability of data is the most important challenge to assess species redistributions under global climate change. Given that the primary purpose of surveys is to provide independent data to inform stock assessment of commercially important populations, we further highlight that single surveys do not cover the full range of the main commercial demersal fish species. An average of 18 surveys is needed to cover at least 50% of species ranges, demonstrating the importance of combining multiple surveys to evaluate species range shifts. We assess the potential for combining surveys to track transboundary species redistributions and show that differences in sampling schemes and inconsistency in sampling can be overcome with spatio-temporal modeling to follow species density redistributions. In light of our global assessment, we establish a framework for improving the management and conservation of transboundary and migrating marine demersal species. We provide directions to improve data availability and encourage countries to share survey data, to assess species vulnerabilities, and to support management adaptation in a time of climate-driven ocean changes.En prensa6,86
New Mediterranean Biodiversity Records (July 2019)
This is the second collective paper issued in 2019, currently amalgamates new knowledge on the Mediterranean geographic distributions of 17 species from five phyla (six aliens, three cosmopolitans, two east Atlantic records and six natives). The acknowledged species were reported from ten countries, mentioned here from west to east: Spain: first report of the east Atlantic grouper Cephalopholis taeniops in the western Mediterranean and an inclusion of Pontarachna puntulum and Litarachna communis to the pontarachnid fauna of Spain; Morocco: first record of Solea senegalensis from the Moroccan Mediterranean coast; Algeria: a valid confirmation for the presence of Sardinella maderensis; Malta: a first record of the Red Sea stomatopod Erugosquilla massavensis; Italy: a rare observation of the crab Paragalene longicrura from Siciliy and a further integration of the alien brown shrimp Penaeus aztecus to the commercial catch in Sicily; Montenegro: a first record of the Lessepsian bigfin reef squid Sepioteuthis lessoniana from the Adriatic Sea; Turkey: northernmost documentation of the Mediterranean flatworm Prostheceraeus giesbrechtii in the Aegean Sea; Israel: a solid confirmation for the population establishment of both the alien rock shrimp Sicyonia lancifer and two species of angelfish, and a first and deepest record of the crystalline goby Odondebuenia balearica; Lebanon: first record of the jellyfish Pelagia noctiluca; Syria: first records of the crown jellyfish Nausithoe punctate and the smallscale codlet Bregmaceros nectabanus
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 Cnidaria, 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 imperi-
al 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.peer-reviewe
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