Marine environment: New alien species identified in Liguria, Italy
15/11/2018
Small marine organisms native to the Galapagos Islands, but also mini Japanese crustaceans and plankton originating in Southeast Asia. These are some of the "alien" species identified in the Gulf of La Spezia as part of a monitoring project conducted by a team of researchers from ENEA, the University of Pavia and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC).
- Watersipora arcuata
"Each panel was colonized by an abundant community of native and non-native species, some of which had never been reported in the Gulf of La Spezia, such as the Watersipora arcuata, coming from the Pacific Ocean", Agnese Marchini of the Earth and Environment Department of the University of Pavia, said. "Alien species, constantly increasing in the Mediterranean, alter marine communities and ecosystems and pose a threat to biodiversity", Marchini went on.
Conducted for the first time in the Mediterranean on twenty-year-old US models, these tests allowed in three months to acquire information on the routes of introduction most followed by invasive species and on sites more susceptible to biological invasions.
"The strategic position of the ENEA center in the Santa Teresa bay allowed to rapidly carry the panels with live organisms and analize the samples under the microscope", Chiara Lombardi of the ENEA Department of Sustainability of Productive and Territorial Systems, pointed out. "The presence of an important commercial port and numerous tourist marinas make the Gulf of La Spezia a very interesting area for this type of studies, as it has several sites considered to be at high risk of introducing non-native species", Lombardi went on.
"We have succeeded in demonstrating that this protocol, designed for oceanic coastal environments, is applicable as an international standard also in the Mediterranean and will make it possible to compare data from different parts of the world, monitoring over time the diversity and abundance of non-indigenous marine species in sites at high risk of introduction, such as ports, tourist marinas and mussel farms ", Michele Repetto of the SERC, pointed out.
In order to characterize more precisely the sites of the Gulf of La Spezia more at risk of biological "invasions", in the coming months researchers will perform further analyses on the samples collected. The results, expected for 2019, will be the first step towards the creation of a historical series useful for the understanding and study of these phenomena in the Mediterranean.
For more information please contact:
Chiara Lombardi, ENEA – Department of Sustainability of Productive and Territorial Systems –Santa Teresa Marine Environment Center, chiara.lombardi@enea.it
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb9p1cwxlJw&feature=youtu.be