Long-term variability of macrobenthic community in a shallow coastal lagoon (Valli di Comacchio, northern Adriatic): Is community resistant to climate changes?

Pitacco, Valentina; Mistri, Michele; Cristina, Maria Luisa

doi:10.1016/j.marenvres.2018.02.026

Cited by 21 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 65 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…From the COM dataset (Valli di Comacchio), a clear decreasing trend of structural indices (S, H' and J') was observed; changes at the community level at this site, in addition to the major factors driving those changes (mainly eel aquaculture and climate changes), have been described thoroughly in previous papers (e.g. , Munari and Mistri 2014b, Munari et al 2005, Pitacco et al 2018. As for the GOR dataset (Sacca di Goro), structural indices failed to depict a temporal trend in the macrobenthic community, but changes were revealed through multivariate analyses.…”

Section: Macrobenthic Community Characteristics At the Two Lter Sitessupporting

confidence: 56%

“…The macrobenthic communities at both LTER sites were characterised by reduced richness and diversity (low S and H') and were badly structured (low J'), as is typical in transitional environments, in particular those of the Po River delta (e.g. Marchini et al 2008, Munari et al 2010, Pitacco et al 2018. Nevertheless, the two LTER sites differed in terms of their hydromorphological features and anthropogenic impact, differences that were reflected in their respective macrobenthic communities.…”

Section: Macrobenthic Community Characteristics At the Two Lter Sitesmentioning

confidence: 91%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Benthic studies in LTER sites: the use of taxonomy surrogates in the detection of long-term changes in lagoonal benthic assemblages

Pitacco¹,

Mistri²,

Infantini³

et al. 2019

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In benthic studies, the identification of organisms at the species level is known to be the best source for ecological and biological information even if time-consuming and expensive. However, taxonomic sufficiency (TS) has been proposed as a short-cut method for quantifying changes in biological assemblages in environmental monitoring. In this paper, we set out to determine whether and how the taxonomic complexity of a benthic assemblage influences the results of TS at two different long-term ecological research (LTER) sites in the Po delta region (north-eastern Italy). Specifically, we investigated whether TS can be used to detect natural and human-driven patterns of variation in benthic assemblages from lagoonal soft bottoms. The first benthic dataset was collected from 1996 to 2015 in a “choked” lagoon, the Valli di Comacchio, a lagoon characterised by long water residence times and heavy eutrophication, while the second was collected from 2004 to 2010 in a “leaky” lagoon, the Sacca di Goro, a coastal area with human pressure limited to aquaculture. Univariate and multivariate statistical analyses were used to assess differences in the taxonomic structure of benthic assemblages and to test TS on the two different datasets. TS seemed to work from species to family level at both sites, despite a higher natural variability of environmental conditions combined with multiple anthropogenic stressors. Therefore, TS at the family level may represent effective taxonomic surrogates across a range of environmental contexts in lagoon environments. Since the structure of the community and the magnitude of changes could influence the efficiency of taxonomic surrogates and data transformations in long-term monitoring, we also suggest periodic analyses at finer taxonomic levels in order to check the efficiency of the application of taxonomic substitutes in routine monitoring programmes in lagoon systems.

show abstract

Section: Macrobenthic Community Characteristics At the Two Lter Sitessupporting

confidence: 56%

Section: Macrobenthic Community Characteristics At the Two Lter Sitesmentioning

confidence: 91%

Benthic studies in LTER sites: the use of taxonomy surrogates in the detection of long-term changes in lagoonal benthic assemblages

Pitacco¹,

Mistri²,

Infantini³

et al. 2019

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Studies on the plankton are also frequent in the naturalistic descriptive of the lagoons, highlighting the works on taxonomy and the distribution of phytoplankton species [48,49]; secondly, there are studies related to zooplankton [50][51][52][53], the trophic structure of the community [54] as well as other more detailed studies on some endangered species [55]. Much more novel are those studies related to the use of eDNA as risk detection in lagoons [56].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mediterranean Coastal Lagoons Review: Sites to Visit before Disappearance

Soria

Pérez-González

Sòria‐Perpinyà

2022

JMSE

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Coastal lagoons are an established priority habitat in the European environment because of the biological communities that inhabit them. Their origin is related to the transport of sediments from a nearby river or the movement of sands by the marine currents that produce the closure of a gulf. Therefore, they are recent geological formations, which also disappear quickly if environmental conditions change. The 37 coastal lagoons with a surface area greater than 10 km2 located in the Mediterranean basin have been identified. Fishing has been the traditional use of these lagoons, in addition to their use as a navigation harbor when they are open to the sea. Pollution, quality problems and their consequences are the most studied topics in recent publications. Sentinel-2 images taken in the summer of 2020 have been used to study water transparency, suspended matter and chlorophyll a concentration. The result was that only six of them are in good ecological condition, but most of them are eutrophic due to the impacts on their environment and the inflow of poor quality water. The cultural values of these lagoons must also be protected and preserved.

show abstract

“…In the North Adriatic area, such an approach successfully outlined the long-term resilience and persistence of late Pleistocene-Holocene marine molluscan assemblages to major environmental changes under natural forcings in contrast to the abrupt, unprecedented shift in community composition and structure that occurred in the Anthropocene [40,41]. Seasonal hypoxia, sediment pollution, bottom trawling, and warming events were determined to have a great impact on benthic communities in the last centuries [42][43][44][45], but also impacted the sedimentary record affecting the temporal resolution of fossil assemblages [40,46]. Disentangling sedimentological and biological effects on benthic communities appears as a key to quantifying paleoecological changes in a high-resolution chronostratigraphic framework [47].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conservation Paleobiology as a Tool to Define Reference Conditions in Naturally Stressed Transitional Settings: Micropaleontological Insights from the Holocene of the Po Coastal Plain (Italy)

Barbieri

Rossi

Ghosh

et al. 2020

Water

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The key role of paralic environments as providers of ecosystem services, associated with their increasingly threatened state, led to the definition of international water management policies aimed to improve ecological quality status (EcoQs). Restoration actions rely on the definition of reference conditions, which is a particularly challenging task in naturally stressed transitional environments. In the present work, we apply the diversity index Exp(H’bc) on benthic foraminifer assemblages from two anthropogenically unimpacted transitional to coastal Holocene sediment successions of the Po coastal plain, in order to assess past EcoQs (PaleoEcoQs). Ostracod ecological groups provided detailed insights on naturally stressful paleoenvironmental conditions. We show that “poor” to “moderate” PaleoEcoQs are recorded by biological indicators at reference conditions under fluctuations of chemical-physical parameters and organic matter enrichment. We emphasize the importance of a site-specific paleobiological approach, as significant differences in diversity occur even on a short spatial scale. This study illustrates that early to mid-Holocene sediment successions resulted to be appropriate for conservation paleobiological purposes, providing a high-resolution paleoecological record under the influence of the Holocene sea-level rise in analogy with the present-day global change.

show abstract

Long-term variability of macrobenthic community in a shallow coastal lagoon (Valli di Comacchio, northern Adriatic): Is community resistant to climate changes?

Cited by 21 publications

References 65 publications

Benthic studies in LTER sites: the use of taxonomy surrogates in the detection of long-term changes in lagoonal benthic assemblages

Benthic studies in LTER sites: the use of taxonomy surrogates in the detection of long-term changes in lagoonal benthic assemblages

Mediterranean Coastal Lagoons Review: Sites to Visit before Disappearance

Conservation Paleobiology as a Tool to Define Reference Conditions in Naturally Stressed Transitional Settings: Micropaleontological Insights from the Holocene of the Po Coastal Plain (Italy)

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About