Publications by authors named "Nicoletta Cadoni"
Article Synopsis
- Microplastics (MPs) are polluting marine environments and may disrupt key processes in sediments, impacting the overall health of benthic ecosystems.
- A study exposed marine sediments to a mix of common MPs over 30 days and found altered organic matter composition, including a decrease in lipids and an increase in proteins.
- Results showed that contaminated sediments experienced reduced carbon degradation rates and changes in enzymatic activities, indicating MPs can significantly affect marine sediment biogeochemistry and potentially harm benthic food webs.
Marine ecosystems are subject to global and local impacts, both contributing to dramatic changes in coastal communities. Assessing such changes requires time series or the revisitation of sites first surveyed in the past. In both cases, data are not necessarily collected by the same observers, which could lead to a bias in the results.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Marine protected areas (MPAs) usually have both positive effects of protection for the fisheries' target species and indirect negative effects for sea urchins. Moreover, often in MPAs sea urchin human harvest is restricted, but allowed. This study is aimed at estimating the effect of human harvest of the sea urchin within MPAs, where fish exploitation is restricted and its density is already controlled by a higher natural predation risk.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- The fan mussel is the largest bivalve unique to the Mediterranean Sea, and since 2016, it has been experiencing significant mass mortality in various regions.
- Initial research pointed to a specific pathogen as the main cause, but newer studies suggest a combination of factors might be at play in this disease outbreak.
- Molecular analyses conducted in Sardinia discovered that some pathogens are not exclusive to fan mussels and revealed the presence of other bacteria previously unreported in this species, highlighting the complexity of the mass mortality situation.