Ricerc@Sapienza

In order to evaluate the effects of ecological disturbances, such as climate change, human-induced habitat modification, or species introduction, and in order to adopt appropriate management policies for their conservation, knowledge of the trophic ecology of protected or threatened species is crucial. The Italian crested newt, Triturus carnifex (Laurenti, 1768), is listed in annexes II and IV of the European Habitats Directive. For this species, changes in water quality and habitat loss represent major threats, potentially impairing its breeding and feeding activities.

In this contribution we will first briefly describe different ways in which invertebrates are part of our lives and how we interact with them. A special focus is the use of invertebrates in scientific research. After a review of the major fields of investigation utilizing invertebrates, we will argue that their use in research consti- tutes an interesting and inspiring case study. As an example, the relatively recent European legislation on the protection of animals in scientific procedures now contemplates cephalopods.

Morphogenetic events that occur during development and regeneration are energy demanding processes requiring profound rearrangements in cell architecture, which need to be coordinated in timely fashion with other cellular activities, such as proliferation, migration and differentiation. In the last 15 years, it has become evident that autophagy, an evolutionarily-conserved catabolic process that mediates the lysosomal turnover of organelles and macromolecules, is an essential " tool" to ensure remodelling events that occur at cellular and tissue levels.

Global change imposes rapid assessments to obtain reliable and updated distribution data to implement conservation measures. This task is undoubtedly unaffordable for numerous invertebrate species, both in terms of time and economic resources, because they are often elusive, detectable life stages are present for a restricted time and ecological data are scarce. Citizen science might be able to provide a large number of records and these data might facilitate the evaluation of extinction risks.

Despite a vast amount of literature has focused on trace element (TE) contamination in Antarctica during the last decades, the assessment of the main pathways driving TE transfer to the biota is still an overlooked issue. This limits the ability to predict how variations in sea-ice dynamics and productivity due to climate change will affect TE allocation in the food web.