Eva Turicchia

Marco Abbiati

Massimo Ponti

English

Archivio istituzionale della ricerca - Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna

This item was downloaded from IRIS Università di Bologna (https://cris.unibo.it/) When citing, please refer to the published version.       This is the final peer-reviewed accepted manuscript of:  Turicchia E, Abbiati M, Ponti M (2020) Mediterranean gorgonians fighting. Marine Biodiversity 50: 33 The final published version is available online at  https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12526-020-01064-w Rights / License:    The terms and conditions for the reuse of this version of the manuscript are specified in the publishing policy. For all terms of use and more information see the publisher's website.    1  Mediterranean gorgonians fighting  1  2 Eva Turicchia1,*, Marco Abbiati2, Massimo Ponti3 3 1 CIRI FRAME, University of Bologna, Via Sant’Alberto 163, 48123 Ravenna, Italy 4 e-mail: eva.turicchia2@unibo.it 5 2 DBC Department, University of Bologna, Via degli Ariani 1, 48121 Ravenna, Italy 6 3 BiGeA Department, University of Bologna, Via Sant’Alberto 163, 48123 Ravenna, Italy  7 * Corresponding author 8  9 The long-lived, slow-growing, and low-resilience sea fans Paramuricea clavata (Risso, 1826) and 10 Eunicella cavolini (Koch, 1887) are keystone species of the Mediterranean coralligenous 11 assemblages and are affected by anthropogenic disturbances and mass mortality events triggered by 12 marine heatwaves (Turicchia et al. 2018; Garrabou et al. 2019). The frequent closeness between 13 colonies of these two sympatric species throughout all the Mediterranean Sea suggests weak 14 interspecific competition, at least at low colony densities, despite a large overlap in their 15 bathymetric distribution (Di Camillo et al. 2018; Ponti et al. 2018). However, a direct interaction 16 between their colonies has never been reported. We photographically documented the accidental 17 contact, maybe caused by basal rocks’ movement, between branches of P. clavata and E. cavolini at 18 28 m depth at Capo Calvo, Elba Island, Italy (42.7350° N, 10.4342° E, Geodetic Datum WGS84), 19 the May 25th, 2019 (Fig. 1a). The branch portions of P. clavata in touch with those of E. cavolini 20 showed depigmented coenenchyme and bare skeletons, while the E. cavolini ones appeared healthy 21 (Fig. 1a, b).  22 The interspecific interactions by contact with neighbouring specimens, although well documented 23 for many scleractinians, are still little investigated in gorgonian octocorals. For the purpose, some 24 corals develop specialised (i.e. sweeper and thread-like) tentacles. Around the contact area, there 25 were thread-like tentacles in polyps of P. clavata, but not in those of E. cavolini (Fig. 1c). In P. 26 2  clavata, thread-like tentacles, with high densities of nematocysts, have been reported to be involved 27 in feeding activity (Lopez-Gonzalez et al. 2018). Although these modified tentacles could also have 28 a defensive function, they seem poorly effective weapon against E. cavolini, which appeared to be 29 the winner in direct fighting.  30  31 Acknowledgements: we are grateful to Biodivers Elba Sea Academy for the valuable diving 32 assistance. 33  34 Funding: This study was partially funded by Reef Check Italia onlus, which covered expedition 35 direct costs. 36  37 Conflict of Interest: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. 38  39 Ethical approval: No animal testing was performed during this study. 40  41 Sampling and field studies: The study is compliant with CBD and Nagoya protocols.  42  43 Author Contribution Statement: ET and MP conceived research and conducted field 44 observations. ET wrote the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. 45  46 References 47 Di Camillo CG, Ponti M, Bavestrello G, Krzelj M, Cerrano C (2018) Building a baseline for 48 habitat-forming corals by a multi-source approach, including Web Ecological Knowledge. 49 Biodivers Conserv 27:1257-1276. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-017-1492-8 50 Garrabou J et al. (2019) Collaborative database to track mass mortality events in the mediterranean 51 sea. Front Mar Sci 6:707. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2019.00707 52 3  Lopez-Gonzalez PJ, Bramanti L, Escribano-Alvarez P, Benedetti MC, Martinez-Baraldes I, Megina 53 C (2018) Thread-like tentacles in the Mediterranean corals Paramuricea clavata and Corallium 54 rubrum. Mediterr Mar Sci 19:394-397. https://doi.org/10.12681/mms.13807 55 Ponti M, Turicchia E, Ferro F, Cerrano C, Abbiati M (2018) The understorey of gorgonian forests 56 in mesophotic temperate reefs. Aquat Conserv 28:1153–1166. https://doi.org/10.1002/aqc.2928 57 Turicchia E, Abbiati M, Sweet M, Ponti M (2018) Mass mortality hits gorgonian forests at 58 Montecristo Island. Dis Aquat Org 131:79-85. https://doi.org/10.3354/dao03284 59  60  61 Fig. 1 Colonies of Paramuricea clavata and Eunicella cavolini in direct contact: a) contact points 62 (scale bar 5 cm); b) close up of depigmented coenenchyme and bare skeleton of P. clavata (scale 63 bar 2 cm); and c) particular of thread-like tentacles in polyps of P. clavata around the contact area 64 (scale bar 1 cm). 65 

Mediterranean gorgonians fighting

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Mediterranean gorgonians fighting

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Archivio istituzionale della ricerca - Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna