Paola Piazza

The Southern Ocean represents one of the world regions most sensitive to warming and there is an urgent need for quantitative data to understand changes in coastal communities. This goal can be achieved through the establishment of permanent monitoring sites and robust sampling designs. In this study, we used an emerging, photogrammetry-based techn...

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...

This new dataset presents occurrence data for Porifera collected in the Ross Sea, mainly in the Terra Nova Bay area, and curated at the Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA, section of Genoa). Specimens were collected in 331 different sampling stations at depths ranging from 17 to 1,100 meters in the framework of 17 different Italian Antarctic ex...

e distributional records of Ophiuroidea stored at the Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA, Sec- tion of Genoa) are presented, corresponding to 1595 individuals that belong to 35 species and 17 genera. Specimens were collected in 106 di erent sampling stations at depths ranging from 21 to 1652 m in the framework of 14 Antarctic expeditions to the...

In polar areas, where benthic sampling is con- strained by a series of limitations imposed by climate and logistic challenges, knowledge about the key elements required to plan a successful survey is fundamental. Dur- ing the International Polar Year (IPY, 2007/2008), under the Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML), new sam- pling campaigns were u...

Sampling activities in extreme environments, such as polar benthic ecosystems, represent an authentic challenge for researchers, showing a variety of logistical difficulties related to the inaccessibility of these areas. In these hostile circumstances, the choice of the gears to deploy is a crucial step, contributing substantially to the maximizati...

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 genus Acesta H. Adams & A. Adams, 1858 (Fam. Limidae) comprises species mainly occurring in the deep sea on hard substrates or canyon walls (Johnson et al. 2013), where hydrodynamic conditions enhance the supply of suspended food. During a survey of Scott and Admiralty seamounts as part of the New Zealand IPY-CAML expedition in 2008, a number o...

This dataset includes information regarding fungal strains collected during several Antarctic expeditions: the Italian National Antarctic Research program (PNRA) expeditions “X” (1994/1995), “XII” (1996/1997), “XVII” (2001/2002), “XIX” (2003/2004), “XXVI” (2010/2011), the Czech “IPY Expedition” (2007–2009) and a number of strains donated by E. Imre...

Here we present distributional records for Tanaidacea specimens collected during several Antarctic expeditions to the Ross Sea: the Italian PNRA expeditions (“V”, 1989/1990; “XI”, 1995/1996; “XIV”, 1998/1999; “XIX”, 2003/2004; “XXV”, 2009/2010) and the New Zealand historical (New Zealand Oceanographic Institute, NZOI, 1958-1961) and recent (“TAN040...