ABSTRACT1. The Pelagos Sanctuary is the largest marine protected area of the Mediterranean Sea (87 500 km 2 ), and is located in the north-west part of the basin. The presence of the bottlenose dolphin in this area is well documented but its distribution and abundance are not well known.2. The present study collected and analysed data from 10 different research groups operating in the Pelagos Sanctuary from 1994 to 2007. Photo-identification data were used to analyse the displacement behaviour of the dolphins and to estimate their abundance through mark-recapture modelling.3. Results show that the distribution of bottlenose dolphin is confined to the continental shelf within the 200 m isobath, with a preference for shallow waters of less than 100 m depth.4. Bottlenose dolphins seem to be more densely present in the eastern part of the sanctuary and along the north-west coast of Corsica.5. Bottlenose dolphins show a residential attitude with excursions usually within a distance of 80 km (50 km on average). A few dolphins exhibit more wide-ranging journeys, travelling up to 427 km between sub-areas.6. The displacement analysis identified two (sub)populations of bottlenose dolphins, one centred on the eastern part of the sanctuary and the other one around the west coast of Corsica.7. In 2006, the eastern (sub)population was estimated to comprise 510-552 individuals, while 368-429 individuals were estimated in the Corsican (sub)population. It was estimated that in total, 884 -1023 bottlenose dolphins were living in the Pelagos Sanctuary MPA in the same year.8. The designation of a number of Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) under the Habitats Directive is discussed as a possible tool to protect the bottlenose dolphin in the Pelagos Sanctuary and in the whole of the Mediterranean Sea.

The first case of the new coronavirus, COVID-19, was reported in China on 17 November 2019. By the end of March 2020, the rapid global spread of infection affected over 1 million people. Italy is one of the countries most impacted, with over 100,000 positive cases identified. The first detected cases were reported on 21 February 2020 in two Italian towns: Vo' Euganeo in the Province of Padua, Veneto region, and Codogno, in the Province of Lodi, Lombardy. In the next weeks the epidemic spread quickly across the country but mainly in the north of Italy. The two regions: Veneto and Lombardy, implemented different strategies to control the viral spread. In Veneto, health personnel tested both symptomatic and asymptomatic subjects, while in Lombardy only symptomatic cases were investigated. We analyzed the evolution of the epidemic in these regions and showed that testing both symptomatic and asymptomatic cases is a more effective strategy to mitigate the epidemic impact. We strongly recommend that decision-makers:

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In spite of all the information available on adult bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) biosonar, the ontogeny of its echolocation abilities has been investigated very little. Earlier studies have reported that neonatal dolphins can produce both whistles and burst-pulsed sounds just after birth and that early-pulsed sounds are probably a precursor of echolocation click trains. The aim of this research is to investigate the development of echolocation signals in a captive calf, born in the facilities of the Acquario di Genova. A set of 81 impulsive sounds were collected from birth to the seventh postnatal week and six additional echolocation click trains were recorded when the dolphin was 1 year old. Moreover, behavioral observations, concurring with sound production, were carried out by means of a video camera. For each sound we measured five acoustic parameters: click train duration (CTD), number of clicks per train, minimum, maximum, and mean click repetition rate (CRR). CTD and number of clicks per train were found to increase with age. Maximum and mean CRR followed a decreasing trend with dolphin growth starting from the second postnatal week. The calf's first head scanning movement was recorded 21 days after birth. Our data suggest that in the bottlenose dolphin the early postnatal weeks are essential for the development of echolocation abilities and that the temporal features of the echolocation click trains remain relatively stable from the seventh postnatal week up to the first year of life.

The aim of this study was to analyze the toxicity of two neurotoxic compounds on the ephyra stage of the Scyphozoan jellyfish Aurelia aurita, an innovative and sensitive model organism recently proposed in ecotoxicological bioassays. Indeed, jellyfish play an important role in the marine ecosystem, being a key component of the gelatinous zooplankton and of the marine food web, but are not represented in routine ecotoxicology. In this study, ephyrae were exposed to several concentrations (0, 0.1, 0.5, 1, 5, 10, 50 mg l -1 ) of eserine (ES) and chlorpyrifos (CPF), a carbamate and an organophosphorous compound, respectively, in order to analyze their toxic effect on this model organism. Acute (% of immobility) and behavioral (% alteration of frequency of pulsations) end-points were investigated after 24 and 48 h of exposure. Exposure to both compounds caused a dosedependent effect, and for each end-point, it was possible to quantify these effects by means of EC 50 . Results highlighted how these compounds reported a high toxicity for marine organisms and exerted their toxic effect on this innovative biological model (in particular, CPF resulted to be more toxic than ES), which proved to be more sensitive than other marine invertebrates commonly used for ecotoxicological bioassays.

Penguins produce contact calls to maintain social relationships and group cohesion. Such vocalisations have recently been demonstrated to encode individual identity information in the African penguin. Using a source-filter theory approach, we investigated whether acoustic cues of individuality can also be found in other Spheniscus penguins and the acoustic features of contact calls have diverged within this genus. We recorded vocalisations from two ex-situ colonies of Humboldt penguin and Magellanic penguin (sympatric and potentially interbreeding in the wild) and one ex-situ group of African penguins (allopatric although capable of interbreeding with the other two species in captivity). We measured 14 acoustic parameters from each vocalisation. These included temporal (duration), source-related (fundamental frequency, f0), and filter-related (formants) parameters. They were then used to carry out a series of stepwise discriminant function analyses (with cross-validation) and General Linear Model comparisons. We showed that contact calls allow individual discrimination in two additional species of the genus Spheniscus. We also found that calls can be classified according to species in a manner far greater than that attributable by chance, even though there is limited genetic distance among African, Humboldt, and Magellanic penguins. Our results provide further evidence that the source-filter theory is a valuable framework for investigating the biologically meaningful information contained in bird vocalisations. Our findings also provide novel insights into penguin vocal communication and suggest that contact calls of the penguin family are affected by selection for individuality.

According to Lyamin and co-authors, neonate bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) almost never sleep, unlike all other mammals that have been studied. Although we agree that young dolphins never stop and float at the surface, we find that they spend a considerable amount of time asleep while swimming. Our findings therefore call into question the conclusions of Lyamin et al..