Andrea Peirano

ENEA | ENEA · SSPT

Communities living on fishing bottoms up to 700 m depth are described utilizing samples collected by otter-trawl in the Gulfof Genoa over a period of fìfteen years.

The loss of coral habitats and associated biodiversity have direct effects both on the physical dynamics of the coast and on natural resources, threatening the survival of local populations. Conservative actions, such as the creation of new Marine Protected Areas, are urgent measures needed to face climate change. Managers need fast and simple meth...

The rapid changes in the climate of Antarctica are likely to pose challenges to living communities, which makes monitoring of Antarctic fauna an urgent necessity. Benthos is particularly difficult to monitor, and is sensitive to local environmental changes. At the same time, long‐term monitoring is complicated by logistical factors. It is therefore...

Seawater warming is affecting corals worldwide. Mass mortality events are increasingly frequent, and the bioconstruction potential of coral reefs is jeopardized. Revisiting sites surveyed in the past may represent a valuable tool to better understand the health state and ongoing trend of coral reefs. In the Mediterranean Sea the only reef-building...

Biodiversity is a portmanteau word to indicate the variety of life at all levels from genes to ecosystems, but it is often simplistically equated to species richness; the word ecodiversity has thus been coined to address habitat variety. Biodiversity represents the core of the natural capital, and as such needs to be quantified and followed over ti...

Biodiversity is a portmanteau word to indicate the variety of life at all levels from genes to ecosystems, but it is often simplistically equated to species richness; the word ecodiversity has thus been coined to address habitat variety. Biodiversity represents the core of the natural capital, and as such needs to be quantified and followed over ti...

In recent years, the frequency of mass mortality events in marine ecosystems has increased, and several populations of benthic organism have been affected, reducing their density and changing their size and age structure. Few details are known about the dynamics of these populations over long time intervals. In late summer of both 1999 and 2003 two...

Recent works have begun to explore the magnitude and frequency of localized changes in seawater chemistry in shallow water systems, where the effects of warming and acidification are still unpredictable. In a Mediterranean shallow coastal site, we empirically characterized the diel, seasonal, and annual pattern of pH, temperature, and associated ch...

Anthropogenic pressure on marine ecosystems is affecting water quality and seafloor integrity. Mediterranean seagrass meadows of endemic Posidonia oceanica (Linnaeus) Delile are considered a priority habitat under the European Directive 92/43/CEE, given their ecological and economic importance and being an environmental quality indicator. Availabil...

A rapid temperature increase in the 1980-90s has been accompanied by dramatic and unprecedented changes in the biota and communities of the Ligurian Sea. This review uses existing historical series (a few of which have been purposely updated) to assess extent and consequences of such changes. A number of warm-water species, previously absent or occ...

Seawater warming is impacting marine ecosystems, but proper evaluation of change requires the availability of long-term biological data series. Mesco Reef (Ligurian Sea, Italy) offers one of the longest Mediterranean data series on sessile epibenthic communities, based on underwater photographic surveys. Photographs taken in four stations between 2...

Sustainable and ecosystem-based marine spatial planning is a priority of Pacific Island countries basing their economy on marine resources. The urgency of management coral reef systems and associated coastal environments, threatened by the e_ects of climate change, require a detailed habitat mapping of the present status and a future monitoring of...

Sustainable and ecosystem-based marine spatial planning is a priority of Pacific Island countries basing their economy on marine resources. The urgency of management coral reef systems and associated coastal environments, threatened by the effects of climate change, require a detailed habitat mapping of the present status and a future monitoring of...

The need for sound baseline information about community structure and composition against which changes can be detected and quantified is a well-recognised priority in Antarctica. Here, the collection of such data is challenging, especially at sea, where long-term monitoring is usually logistically feasible only in the proximity of permanent resear...

Ecological studies about marine benthic communities received a major leap from the application of a variety of non-destructive sampling and mapping techniques based on underwater image and video recording. The well-established scientific diving practice consists in the acquisition of single path or ‘round-trip’ over elongated transects, with the im...

Populations of key benthic habitat-forming octocoral species have declined significantly in the Mediterranean Sea due to mass mortality events caused by microbial disease outbreaks linked to high summer seawater temperatures. Recently, we showed that themicrobial communities of these octocorals are relatively structured; however, our knowledge on t...

Cold‐water coral (CWC) ecosystems are long‐lived, slow‐growing and fragile, which makes them especially vulnerable to physical damage. In recent decades, CWCs have been severely threatened by fisheries, hydrocarbon extraction, pollution and other human activities. In the Mediterranean Sea, some investigations have been carried out on CWC ecosystems...

Clonal propagation is a common feature of benthic marine organisms. In the present study, we investigated the contribution of clonal reproduction in the red gorgonian Paramuricea clavata. Mediterranean populations of P. clavata were severely affected by mass mortality events caused by increased water temperature in 1999 and 2003. The populations ar...

A simple time-lapse apparatus for monitoring macrozoobenthos activity in Antarctica - Volume 28 Issue 6 - Andrea Peirano, Andrea Bordone, Simone Marini, Paola Piazza, Stefano Schiaparelli

The overall objective of this proposal is to build an advanced and original prototype specifically devoted to seafloor and water-column monitoring as starting Italian contribution to the further development of the EMSO Ligurian Sea node. In detail the aim of the observatory is to ensure real-time continuous acquisition of geophysical, oceanographic...

Understanding the effects of environmental change on ecosystems requires the identification of baselines that may act as reference conditions. However, the continuous change of these references challenges our ability to define the true natural status of ecosystems. The so-called sliding baseline syndrome can be overcome through the analysis of quan...

The Levante Canyon, located approximately in the offshore area of Cinque Terre (eastern Ligurian Sea, NW Mediterranean), was investigated in autumn 2013 onboard Italian Navy Ships through high resolution multibeam (MB), side scan sonar (SSS) and image data acquired by a Remotely Operating Vehicle (ROV) in order to study the seafloor features and ec...

EGU POSTER

EMSO, European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water-column Observatory, is an ESFRI large-scale Research Infrastructure. EMSO is aimed to ocean observatories establishment and operation from the Arctic, the Atlantic Ocean and to the Mediterranean (Fig.1), for long-term observation and study of geo-hazards, climate change and marine ecosystems. One...

The increasing rate of human-induced environmental changes on coastal marine ecosystems has created a demand for effective descriptors, in particular for those suitable for monitoring the status of seagrass meadows. Growing evidence has supported the useful application of biochemical and genetic descriptors such as secondary metabolite synthesis, p...

Time series analysis of the leaf biometry and rhizome production of the endemic Mediterranean seagrass Posidonia oceanica (L.) Delile was performed for a meadow in the Ligurian Sea (NW Mediterranean) in order to assess changes in plant growth during a massive flowering event that occurred in 2003 and coincided with the warmest summer temperatures r...

We assessed the in situ daily primary production, photosynthetic efficiency, and xanthophyll cycling of a temperate coral, Cladocora caespitosa, during the summer using an in situ incubation chamber equipped with temperature, oxygen, light, salinity, and pH sensors. During sunny days, photosynthetic carbon (C) production rates of C. caespitosa can...

Wrecks play an important role in enhancing marine biodiversity. SCUBA diving video-samplings were performed on eight wrecks, including seven shipwrecks and a sunken airplane, scattered over 180 km along the Ligurian coastline in the northwestern Mediterranean Sea, in water depths of 30‐65 m. Differences in composition of macrobenthic communities we...

Carbon and nitrogen isotope abundance values (δ13C and δ15N, respectively) were measured for the first time in the soft tissue, axial skeleton, and spicules of 4 Mediterranean gorgonians, 3 asymbiotic (Leptogorgia sarmentosa, Paramuricea clavata, and Eunicella verrucosa) and 1 symbiotic with autotrophic dinoflagellates (Eunicella singularis). The i...

Colonies of the symbiotic Mediterrean gorgonian Eunicella singularis were found to host the warm-tropical barnacle Conopea calceola on rocky bottoms in the Sicily Channel. Barnacle' presence and abundance (some tens individuals per colony) is probably due to increasing seawater temperatures, this 'co-habitation' supposedly representing a strategy f...

A population of the Mediterranean red gorgonian Paramuricea clavata has exhibited unexpected resilience after being impacted by 2 anomalous mortality events in 1999 and 2003. To understand the recovery mechanisms, we examined the population reproductive structure and reproductive output based on data collected via non-destructive sampling technique...

Genetic differences in the Posidonia oceanica meadow of Monterosso al Mare (NW Mediterranean, Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) “Cinque Terre”) were compared in three stations, at an increasing distance from a source of impact (beach nourishment) in the recent decade. Random amplified polymorphic DNA analysis showed a higher genetic variability (>20 %)...

Marine coastal ecosystems are among the most vulnerable to global change. A way to evaluate their long-term variation is monitoring sites where long-time series are available, but data sets encompassing time scales longer than a few decades are scarce, especially for Mediterranean rocky reef communities. It might be possible to reconstruct the ecol...

In the last decades, blooms of Ostreopsis ovata are increasingly frequent in several Mediterranean coastal areas, sometimes causing problems to the public health. The quantification of O. ovata abundances is generally performed by quantifying the number of cells per gram of macroalga, often preventing the comparison of abundances from different sit...

Carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios (d 13 C and d 15 N) were determined in the zooxanthellae, host tissue, and whole symbiotic association of the symbiotic temperate coral Cladocora caespitosa, as well as in the different components of the coral's potential food sources (plankton, particulate organic matter in seawater and in the sediment). Data wer...

In the framework of the Action Plan for the Conservation of Coralligenous and other Mediterranean bio-constructions adopted by Contracting Parties to Barcelona Convention Barcelona in 2008, several priority actions are identified which relate in particular to (i) The strengthening the knowledge on the distribution and composition of these populatio...

The results of 15 years of monitoring of Posidonia oceanica in the “Cinque Terre” Marine Protected Area (NW Mediterranean) are presented. Seasonal data on meadow characteristics (cover and shoot den-sity), plant phenology (leaf number, leaf length and width, leaf brown portion, undamaged leaves), lepidochronology, leaf epiphyte cover and herbivore...

This experimental study assessed the grazing rates of the Mediterranean symbiotic coral Cladocora caespitosa on the 4 main food sources available in its natural environment: detrital particulate organic matter (DPOM) and pico-, nano-, and microzooplankton. These rates were compared to the rates of 2 other scleractinian symbiotic species, the Medite...

Long-term change in the coralligenous community of Punta Mesco (Ligurian Sea) was evaluated merging qualitative information contained in descriptive papers since 1937 with quantitative data obtained from discontinuous photographic surveys since 1961. Increased sedimentation rate and surface-water temperature were responsible for the major changes o...

An external genetic input of Posidonia oceanica fruits dispersed by currents in the Ligurian Sea (Western Mediterranean) was investigated. During 2003–2004, when a massive fruiting event occurred, fruits were collected from plants at Monterosso al Mare (meadow) and compared with stranded fruits sampled in front of the meadow and downcurrent in Tusc...

Long-term change in the coralligenous community of Punta Mesco (Ligurian Sea) was evaluated merging qualitative information contained in descriptive papers since 1937 with quantitative data obtained from discontinuous photographic surveys since 1961. Increased sedimentation rate and surface-water temperature were responsible for the major changes o...

Marine coastal ecosystems are among the most vulnerable to global change. A way to evaluate their long term variation is to monitor sites which had been studied in the past, but data sets encompassing time scales longer than a few decades are scarce, especially for temperate reef ecosystems. Nevertheless, it might be possible to reconstruct the eco...

Marine coastal ecosystems are among the most vulnerable to global change. A way to evaluate their long term variation is to monitor sites which had been studied in the past, but data sets encompassing time scales longer than a few decades are scarce, especially for temperate reef ecosystems. Nevertheless, it might be possible to reconstruct the eco...

Gorgonian corals are long-lived, slow-growing species exhibiting slow population dynamics. Demographic data collected over a period of 11 yr on a small population of temperate, canopy-forming gorgonians dwelling near the edge of the summer thermocline in the northwestern Mediterranean Sea enabled us to assess its responses to the large mortality ev...

A sclerochronological analysis was performed on Cladocora caespitosa corals from Late Pleistocene terraces near Taranto (Apulia, Italy) to reconstruct the main palaeoenvironmental conditions at the time of their growth. The fossil corallites were sampled in the Santa Teresiola uplifted bank or ‘open frame reef’ attributed to the Last Interglacial P...

The Mediterranean endemic Cladocora caespitosa (Linnaeus, 1767) is a colonial scleractinian coral belonging to the family Faviidae and the only zooxanthellate coral from Mediterranean whose colonies may fuse in reef-like structures similar to those in tropical seas. This coral is known as one of the major carbonate producers in the Mediterranean Se...

Several episodes of mass mortality, affecting local populations of gorgonians and other sessile invertebrates, coinciding with anomalous water warming, have been recorded during the last decade in the northwestern Mediterranean. The population of the gorgonian Paramuricea clavata living on a vertical cliff in the Gulf of La Spezia (Eastern Ligurian...

Since 1991, the activities of the laboratory of benthic ecology of the ENEA Marine Research Centre of La Spezia (Italy) are centred in the Eastern Ligurian Sea (NW Mediterranean) and focused on coralligenous assemblages and bioconstructional organisms. Changes of coralligenous assemblages and long-lived species have been monitored by means of short...

The Mediterranean endemic Cladocora caespitosa (Linnaeus, 1767) is a colonial scleractinian coral belonging to the family Faviidae and the only zooxanthellate coral from Mediterranean whose colonies may fuse in reef-like structures similar to those in tropical seas. This coral is known as one of the major carbonate producers in the Mediterranean Se...

The influence of geographical location and depth on the rhizome primary production of Posidonia oceanica was investigated over different spatial scales: large (the whole Ligurian coast), medium (the individual meadows) and small (the sites of each individual meadow). Six Posidonia oceanica meadows, separated by 30 to 60 km from each other, were sam...

Recent investigations have shown the temperate scleractinian coral Cladocora caespitosa to be a new potential climate archive for the Mediterranean Sea. Whilst earlier studies have demonstrated a seasonal variation in growth rates, they were unable to distinguish which environmental parameter (light, temperature, or food) was influencing growth. In...

In situ photosynthetic fluorescence of the zooxanthellate Mediterranean coral Cladocora caespitosa (L.) was measured seasonally on colonies from 5 to 27 m depth using an INF-300 Integrating Natural Fluorometer (Biospherical Instrument Inc.). This oceanographic instrument, used to measure the in vivo phytoplankton chlorophyll a (Chl a) fluorescence,...

We investigated the conservation status and ecosystem substitution in six Posidonia oceanica (L.) Delile meadows in 2002 along 300 km of the Ligurian coast (NW Mediterranean Sea). We studied the meadows by scuba transects and we compared the meadows state of health through in situ shoot density counts and computing the Conservation Index (CI), the...

Monitoring the extension of seagrass meadows over time is of primary importance for the surveillance of marine coastal biodiversity. Here, we analyse the evolution of the meadow of Cymodocea nodosa in the Gulf of Tigullio, a coastal tract of naturalistic interest but subjected to high anthropogenic pressure. Historical maps at a scale 1:25,000 of C...

Three rare fruiting events of Posidonia oceanica in the Ligurian Sea in 1992, 1993 and 2004 were analysed to investigate the possibility that floating fruits coming from southern meadows of Corsica and Livorno (Tuscany) can supply northern meadows. Meteorological and oceanographic data are compared to data on stranded fruits to identify possibile o...

Mass-mortality events of the temperate coral Cladocora caespi-tosa were recorded in the Gulf of La Spezia (NW Mediterranean) in the summers of 1997, 1998 and 1999. At the end of the summer 1999, 60% of the colonies found in 1997 were damaged and more than 50% of the damaged colonies were completely dead. Com-plete death of the largest colonies caus...

Monthly skeletal growth of the scleractinian, temperate coral Cladocora caespitosa (L.) from the Ligurian Sea (NW Mediterranean) was analysed for a period of 1year and compared with seawater parameters. Measurements on corallite sections and on X-ray images showed that the formation of the high-density (HD) band and two dissepiments are favoured by...

Eight shallow water Posidonia oceanica meadows were sampled in June 1999 along 300 km of the Ligurian coast and were compared through shoot density and lepidochronology. The growth of the seagrass was examined in the light of climate fluctuations and local stresses, colonisation by alien, invasive alga Caulerpa taxifolia, and effects of the oil spi...

The conservation of the coastal marine environment requires the possession of information that enables the global quality of the environment to be evaluated reliably and relatively quickly. The use of biological indicators is often an appropriate method. Seagrasses in general, and Posidonia oceanica meadows in particular, are considered to be appro...

To evaluate genetic differences of Posidonia oceanica (L.) Delile both at smaller (within a meadow) and larger scale (Mediterranean basin), plants of P. oceanica were analyzed by PCR technique and compared using random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers. Results were associated to known differences in phenology. At the small-scale level, P. o...

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the colonization of the green alga Caulerpa racemosa var. cylindracea thirteen years after it was signalled in the Mediterranean Sea. The alga has been recorded along the coasts of 11 nations, developing on all kind of substrata, both in polluted and in unpolluted areas, between 0 and 70 m depth. The length of c...

A quantitative study of sessile macroepibenthos was carried out in Palaeochori Bay (Milos Island, Aegean Sea) using underwater, framed, still photographs. Images of sessile epibenthos were collected from four different rocky shoals at 10–35 m depth: shoal CR, where continuous vent activity was evident, and shoals E, ST and S, without evident vent a...

Sclerochronology was applied to recent, Holocene and Pleistocene samples of Cladocora caespitosa. Late Pliocene samples were recrystallised and thus unsuitable for sclerochronology. Quaternary samples showed a clear, alternating banding pattern as in the living coral, confirming a marked seasonality of past climate. The computed mean annual growth...

This paper describes a 3-D reconstruction method which allows accurate measurements of volume, surface area and other morphometric measurements of three-dimensional biological objects, without removing them from the sea. It represents a novel approach based on multiple views (eight resulted to be sufficient) from underwater video images and a new i...

peer reviewed Peer Reviewed Title: Seagrasses biodiversity (Posidonia oceanica and Zostera marina) in the Mediterranean Sea Journal Issue: Biogeographia – The Journal of Integrative Biogeography, 24 Author: Micheli, Carla; Paganin, Patrizia; Maffucci, Massimo; Dolce, Tania; Nascetti, Giuseppe; Peirano, Andrea; et al. Publication Date: 2003...

Introduction The present paper forms part of the research undertaken by the Marine Environment Research Centre ENEA S. Teresa together with the Italian Ministry of Environment, with the leading idea of the sustainable use of coastal resources, in order to give guidelines on integrated coastal management (DELBONO et alii, 2001). This study aims to c...

Riassunto Le relazioni fra organismi e sedimenti sono da molti anni investigate e molti studi hanno messo in evidenza che le caratteristiche delle comunità bentoniche dipendono strettamente dalla natura fisico-chimica del substrato in cui vivono e dalle caratteristiche del sedimento. Scopo del lavoro è valutare l'effetto dei processi sedimentari in...

Two techniques to estimate growth of the Mediterranean seagrass Posidonia oceanica are compared. Leaf scale thickness and internodal length of orthotropic rhizomes were measured on the same rhizomes. Yearly cycles from internodal length measurements were in phase with lepidochronological years only after 3 years of rhizome growth. The start of a le...

The GPS intelligent buoy is a portable underwater tracking system consisting of four buoys and one pinger. The pinger was mounted on an underwater vehicle driven by a scuba diver and used to map the limits of a Posidonia oceanica meadow. To test the accuracy of the method the system was tried out on different types of limits and on healthy and regr...

Seasonal grazing of the fish Sarpa salpa (L.). the urchin Paracentrotus lividus Lamarck and the isopods Idotea spp. was compared with the C/N ratio of adult and intermediate leaves and epiphytes of Posidonia oceanica (L.) Delile, collected at three different depths. Despite seasonal differences in grazing, herbivores showed preferences throughout t...