Mediterranean Sea shelters for the gold coral Savalia savaglia (Bertoloni, 1819): An assessment of potential distribution of a rare parasitic species.

Savalia savaglia is an ecosystem engineer listed as Near-Threatened by the IUCN, even though effective management and proper monitoring efforts to assess its distribution is still lacking. The record of large, long-established colonies can indicate the occurrence of areas with limited human local pressure. These areas may be considered as proxies for the creation of baselines of reference useful to design restoration strategies.