Ricerc@Sapienza

A hundred pollen and plant macrofossil records from the Iberian Peninsula, Southern France, the Italian Peninsula, Greece and the Aegean, and the southwestern Black Sea area formed the basis for a review of the Quaternary distribution and extirpation of tree populations from Southern Europe. Following a discussion of the caveats/challenges about using pollen data, the Quaternary history of tree taxa has been

The coralligenous habitats found in the Mediterranean Sea are hotspots comparable in biodiversity to tropical reefs. Coralligenous reefs are vulnerable to many human pressures, thus they are among the most threatened habitats in the Mediterranean Sea. In this study, we assessed the impacts on coralligenous habitats of activities associated with salvaging the wreck of the Costa Concordia cruise ship. After its partial foundering in 2012, the Costa Concordia remained adjacent to the eastern coast of Giglio Island (Tuscany, Italy), in the Tyrrhenian Sea, for over two years.

The influence of geomorphological features on the distribution of Cystoseira populations along the coasts of four pristine islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea (Italy, central Mediterranean) was studied by means of a model-based statistical analysis. The most relevant trait that determined the presence of these populations was found to be the coastline slope at the level of the infralittoral fringe. Our findings indicate that slopes above 60?reduce the likelihood of Cystoseira communities.

We present the EU LIFE PonDerat project, which is aimed at restoring the natural ecosystems of the Pontine Archipelago, a group of islands located off the western coast of Italy. The spread of invasive species is a major environmental threat on these islands, which are rich in rare habitats and endemic species and are important sites for the conservation of Mediterranean biodiversity. The project focuses on the conservation of species and habitats that are protected by EU laws but are currently threatened by introduced plants and animals.

Aim: Woodlands make up a third of European territory and carry out important ecosystem functions, yet a comprehensive overview of their invasion by alien plants has never been undertaken across this continent. Location: Europe. Methods: We extracted data from 251,740 vegetation plots stored in the recently compiled European Vegetation Archive.

In this study, we analysed the variability of reserve storage in juvenile European hake (Merluccius merluccius) off the western coasts of Italy (Central Mediterranean Sea). Reserve storage was measured by the hepatosomatic index (HSI), in relation to environmental and population covariates. HSI has been proved to be a consistent measure of energy storage in gadoids, thus reflecting quantity and quality of food availability for growth.

The effects of scuba diving activities on coralligenous concretions builders in the Mediterranean Sea are reported for a non-marine protected area (non-MPA). Five erect bryozoan species, which are particularly vulnerable due to their fragile structure, were investigated: Adeonella calveti, Myriapora truncata, Pentapora fascialis, Reteporella grimaldii, and Smittina cervicornis. These species were sampled at frequently and rarely visited diving sites to the maximum depths reachable with the most common recreational diving certifications (i.e., 40 m).

As rates of global warming increase rapidly, identifying species at risk of decline dueto climate impacts and the factors affecting this risk have become key challenges inecology and conservation biology. Here, we present a framework for assessing threecomponents of climate-related risk for species: vulnerability, exposure and hazard.We used the relationship between the observed response of species to climatechange and a set of intrinsic traits (e.g. weaning age) and extrinsic factors (e.g.

Background: Recent genome studies of modern and ancient samples have proposed that Native Americans derive from a subset of the Eurasian gene pool carried to America by an ancestral Beringian population, from which two well-differentiated components originated and subsequently mixed in different proportion during their spread in the Americas.

How the body plan is established and maintained in multicellular organisms is a central question in developmental biology. Thanks to its simple and symmetric structure, the root represents a powerful tool to study the molecular mechanisms underlying the establishment and maintenance of developmental axes.