Towards sea cucumbers as a new model in embryo-larval bioassays: Holothuria tubulosa as test species for the assessment of marine pollution

Rakaj, Arnold; Morroni, Lorenzo; Grosso, Luca; Fianchini, Alessandra; Pensa, Davide; Pellegrini, David; Regoli, Francesco

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.147593

Cited by 13 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 55 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…With the goal of identifying an experimentally tractable sea cucumber model in Europe, we established Holothuria tubulosa (Gmelin, 1788) for cell and developmental biology. This species is abundant in the Mediterranean Sea and the Eastern Atlantic Ocean (Tortonese et al, 1965;Koukouras et al, 2007), it accelerates the degradation of seagrass detritus in Posidonia oceanica meadows (Gustato et al, 1982;Francour, 1990;Coulon and Jangoux, 1993;Costa et al, 2014) and it is now severely endangered by the local fish market (Rakaj et al, 2018, Rakaj et al, 2021.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Larval development of Holothuria tubulosa, a new tractable system for evo-devo

Perillo,

Alessandro,

Toscano

et al. 2024

Front. Ecol. Evol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

To explore animal diversity, new experimentally tractable organisms must be established. Echinoderms include five groups of marine animals that have been used as developmental models for over a century thanks to their low costs, high fecundity, optically clear larvae and genetic tractability. An additional advantage of echinoderms is that their larval forms display diverse morphologies. This rich diversity enables comparative studies to investigate the evolutionary relationships among cell types, tissues, and organs. However, reproducible protocols to obtain gametes, detailed information on embryogenesis, and genomic tools have been optimized only for selected species of sea urchins and sea stars. To address this gap, we established the abundant Mediterranean sea cucumber Holothuria tubulosa as a new experimental system. Here we describe a method to reliably obtain gametes and make embryonic cultures multiple times from the same animal and characterize unique larval tissues combining immunohistochemistry and high-resolution microscopy. This work represents a step forward in our understanding of holothurian development and establishes H. tubulosa as an emerging experimental system for evo-devo and other biological disciplines.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Larval development of Holothuria tubulosa, a new tractable system for evo-devo

Perillo,

Alessandro,

Toscano

et al. 2024

Front. Ecol. Evol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Although coastal areas cover only 10% of the earth's surface area, they host over 60% of the world's population and drive the growth of fisheries, infrastructure development and tourism, resulting in additional pressure on natural coastal ecosystems (Parravicini et al, 2012). Over half of the world's coastal ecosystems can be considered under "moderate" or "high" threat from human development, implying an increased risk for benthic communities and associated species (Bryant et al, 1995;Dauvin et al, 2012;Morroni et al, 2020;Rakaj et al, 2021). Coastal areas are often composed of habitat mosaics, including terrestrial (above water) and marine (below water) features that play a key role in ecosystem functioning.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coastal benthic habitat mapping and monitoring by integrating aerial and water surface low-cost drones

et al. 2023

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Accurate data on community structure is a priority issue in studying coastal habitats facing human pressures. The recent development of remote sensing tools has offered a ground-breaking way to collect ecological information at a very fine scale, especially using low-cost aerial photogrammetry. Although coastal mapping is carried out using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs or drones), they can provide limited information regarding underwater benthic habitats. To achieve a precise characterisation of underwater habitat types and species assemblages, new imagery acquisition instruments become necessary to support accurate mapping programmes. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate an integrated approach based on Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetric acquisition using low-cost Unmanned Aerial (UAV) and Surface (USV) Vehicles to finely map shallow benthic communities, which determine the high complexity of coastal environments. The photogrammetric outputs, including both UAV-based high (sub-meter) and USV-based ultra-high (sub-centimetre) raster products such as orthophoto mosaics and Digital Surface Models (DSMs), were classified using Object-Based Image Analysis (OBIA) approach. The application of a supervised learning method based on Support Vector Machines (SVM) classification resulted in good overall classification accuracies > 70%, proving to be a practical and feasible tool for analysing both aerial and underwater ultra-high spatial resolution imagery. The detected seabed cover classes included above and below-water key coastal features of ecological interest such as seagrass beds, “banquettes” deposits and hard bottoms. Using USV-based imagery can considerably improve the identification of specific organisms with a critical role in benthic communities, such as photophilous macroalgal beds. We conclude that the integrated use of low-cost unmanned aerial and surface vehicles and GIS processing is an effective strategy for allowing fully remote detailed data on shallow water benthic communities.

show abstract

“…Some recent studies have developed new analytical indexes which also take in consideration the severity of such abnormalities (Morroni et al, 2016;Corinaldesi et al, 2017;Bonaventura et al, 2021) by using a selective criterion, such as detailed skeleton malformation (Carballeira et al, 2012) or through morphometrics criteria (Bertucci and Bellas, 2021). Sea cucumbers have also been proposed recently for embryo toxicity bioassays (Morroni et al, 2020b;Rakaj et al, 2021), showing their suitability as a new test species. Sea cucumbers are an important component of soft benthic communities, which play a key role in controlling organic matter dynamics and detrital pathways in marine sediments (Purcell et al, 2016;Rakaj et al, 2018Rakaj et al, , 2019Grosso et al, 2023;Pensa et al, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, in this study, embryo tests were carried out with real environmental samples using the elutriates of contaminated marine sediments from Piombino Harbour (Italy). Selected endpoints, including the percentage of abnormal embryos and the specific Integrative Toxicity Indices (ITI) and the association of different scores to various developmental anomalies (Morroni et al, 2016(Morroni et al, , 2020Bonaventura et al, 2021;Rakaj et al, 2021), were used to assess the responsiveness of the assays.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Echinoderm Larvae as Bioindicators for the Assessment of Marine Pollution: Sea Urchin and Sea Cucumber Responsiveness and Future Perspectives

Morroni,

Rakaj,

Grosso

et al. 2023

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Towards sea cucumbers as a new model in embryo-larval bioassays: Holothuria tubulosa as test species for the assessment of marine pollution

Cited by 13 publications

References 55 publications

Larval development of Holothuria tubulosa, a new tractable system for evo-devo

Larval development of Holothuria tubulosa, a new tractable system for evo-devo

Coastal benthic habitat mapping and monitoring by integrating aerial and water surface low-cost drones

Echinoderm Larvae as Bioindicators for the Assessment of Marine Pollution: Sea Urchin and Sea Cucumber Responsiveness and Future Perspectives

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About