An historical "wreck": A transcriptome assembly of the naval shipworm, Teredo navalis Linnaeus, 1978.

Historically famous for their negative impact on human-built marine wood structures, mollusc shipworms play a central ecological role in marine ecosystems. Their association with bacterial symbionts, providing cellulolytic and nitrogen-fixing activities, underscores their exceptional wood-eating and wood-boring behaviours, improving energy transfer and the recycling of essential nutrients locked in the wood cellulose. Importantly, from a molecular standpoint, a minute of omic resources are available from this lineage of Bivalvia.

Rapid tropicalization evidence of subtidal seaweed assemblages along a coastal transitional zone.

Anthropogenic climate change, particularly seawater warming, is expected to drive quick shifts in marine species distribution transforming coastal communities. These shifts in distribution will be particularly noticeable in biogeographical transition zones. The continental Portuguese coast stretches from north to south along 900 km.

Kelp carbon sink potential decreases with warming due to accelerating decomposition.

Cycling of organic carbon in the ocean has the potential to mitigate or exacerbate global climate change, but major questions remain about the environmental controls on organic carbon flux in the coastal zone. Here, we used a field experiment distributed across 28° of latitude, and the entire range of 2 dominant kelp species in the northern hemisphere, to measure decomposition rates of kelp detritus on the seafloor in relation to local environmental factors. Detritus decomposition in both species were strongly related to ocean temperature and initial carbon content, with higher rates of biomass loss at lower latitudes with warmer temperatures.

Local flexibility in feeding behaviour and contrasting microhabitat use of an omnivore across latitudes.

As the environment is getting warmer and species are redistributed, consumers can be forced to adjust their interactions with available prey, and this could have cascading effects within food webs. To better understand the capacity for foraging flexibility, our study aimed to determine the diet variability of an ectotherm omnivore inhabiting kelp forests, the sea urchin Echinus esculentus, along its entire latitudinal distribution in the northeast Atlantic. Using a combination of gut content and stable isotope analyses, we determined the diet and trophic position of sea urchins at sites in Portugal (42° N), France (49° N), southern Norway (63° N), and northern Norway (70° N), and related these results to the local abundance and distribution of putative food items.

Of Retinoids and Organotins: The Evolution of the Retinoid X Receptor in Metazoa.

Nuclear receptors (NRs) are transcription factors accomplishing a multiplicity of functions, essential for organismal homeostasis. Among their numerous members, the retinoid X receptor (RXR) is a central player of the endocrine system, with a singular ability to operate as a homodimer or a heterodimer with other NRs. Additionally, RXR has been found to be a critical actor in various processes of endocrine disruption resulting from the exposure to a known class of xenobiotics termed organotins (e.

An Orthologue of the Retinoic Acid Receptor (RAR) Is Present in the Ecdysozoa Phylum Priapulida.

Signalling molecules and their cognate receptors are central components of the Metazoa endocrine system. Defining their presence or absence in extant animal lineages is critical to accurately devise evolutionary patterns, physiological shifts and the impact of endocrine disrupting chemicals. Here, we address the evolution of retinoic acid (RA) signalling in the Priapulida worm, Lamarck, 1816, an Ecdysozoa.

Unexpected nutrient influence on the thermal ecophysiology of seaweeds that recently followed opposite abundance shifts.

World's oceans are warming, and recent studies suggest that the Iberian upwelling system may be weakening. To understand the potential consequences of both trends, six intertidal seaweeds that recently followed opposite upward and downward abundance shifts in the Iberian upwelling region were exposed for six weeks to conditions simulating present and warmed scenarios, combined with nutrient treatments emulating the influence and absence of the upwelling. Unlike expectations, a high nutrient supply did not ameliorate the effects of warming.

Short-term variation of abundance of the purple sea urchin, Paracentrotus lividus (Lamarck, 1816), subject to harvesting in northern Portugal.

Paracentrotus lividus is a common and intensely harvested sea urchin at several European locations, including the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula. The increasing human pressure on this resource due to the growing demand and market value of sea urchin gonads as seafood raises concerns on the ecological sustainability of present fisheries, which are showing a technological improvement and an expansion towards previously non-harvested areas. We examined the abundance of P.