Publications by authors named "Maira Maselli"

Article Synopsis
  • The NEREA initiative focuses on creating an augmented observatory in the Gulf of Naples to improve our understanding of marine ecosystems through a comprehensive approach.
  • It combines traditional research methods with advanced techniques like metabarcoding and metagenomics, building on past expeditions and research sites.
  • In its first 10 months (April 2019 to January 2020), NEREA collected extensive data on physical and chemical parameters, plankton biodiversity, and genetics, resulting in significant insights into marine ecosystems.
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Marine plankton capable of photosynthesis and predation ("mixoplankton") comprise up to 50% of protist plankton and include many harmful species. However, marine environmental management policies, including the European Union Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) and the USEPA, assume a strict dichotomy between autotrophic phytoplankton and heterotrophic zooplankton. Mixoplankton often differ significantly from these two categories in their response to environmental pressures and affect the marine environment in ways we are only beginning to understand.

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Meltwater runoff from glaciers carries particles, so-called glacial flour that may affect planktonic organisms and the functioning of marine ecosystems. Protist microplankton is at the base of marine food webs and thus plays an important role in sustaining important ecosystem services. To assess the effect of glacial flour on photoautotrophic, heterotrophic and mixotrophic microplankton, the spatial distribution of these trophic groups was studied in four Greenlandic fjords during summer.

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Article Synopsis
  • Marine ciliates like Strombidium cf. basimorphum can utilize chloroplasts from their prey for photosynthesis but aren't effective at using dissolved inorganic nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus for growth.
  • * Research found that low concentrations of these inorganic nutrients led to higher prey carbon content, which in turn boosted ciliate growth and feeding.
  • * Conversely, high nutrient concentrations resulted in lower prey carbon content, limiting the ciliate's growth, demonstrating its reliance on nutrient-rich prey rather than dissolved inorganic nutrients.
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Many marine ciliate species retain functional chloroplasts from their photosynthetic prey. In some species, the functionality of the acquired plastids is connected to the simultaneous retention of prey nuclei. To date, this has never been documented in plastidic species.

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Many species of the ciliate genus can acquire functional chloroplasts from a wide range of algal prey and are thus classified as generalist non-constitutive mixotrophs. Little, however, is known about the influence of irradiance and prey availability on their ability to exploit the photosynthetic potential of the chloroplasts, and how this may explain their spatial and temporal distribution in nature. In this study, inorganic carbon uptake, growth, and ingestion rates were measured for cf.

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Little is known on the antioxidant activity modulation in microalgae, even less in diatoms. Antioxidant molecule concentrations and their modulation in microalgae has received little attention and the interconnection between light, photosynthesis, photoprotection, and antioxidant network in microalgae is still unclear. To fill this gap, we selected light as external forcing to drive physiological regulation and acclimation in the costal diatom .

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