scholarly journals Linking home ranges to protected area size: The case study of the Mediterranean Sea

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Di Franco ◽  
Jeremiah G. Plass-Johnson ◽  
Manfredi Di Lorenzo ◽  
Bruno Meola ◽  
Joachim Claudet ◽  
...  

Protected areas not allowing extractive activities (here called fully protected area) are a spatially explicit conservation management tool commonly used to ensure populations persistence. This is achieved when an adequate fraction of a species' population spends most of its time within the boundaries of the protected area. Within a marine context, home ranges represent a tractable metric to provide guidance and evaluation of fully protected areas. We compiled peer-reviewed literature specific to the home ranges of finfishes and invertebrates of ecological and/or commercial importance in the Mediterranean Sea, and related this to the size of 184 Mediterranean fully protected areas. We also investigated the influence of fully protected areas size on fish density in contrast to fished areas with respect to home ranges. Home range estimations were available for 11 species (10 fishes and 1 lobster). The European spiny lobster Palinurus elephas had the smallest home range (0.0039 ± 0.0014 km2; mean ± 1 SE), while the painted comber Serranus scriba (1.1075 ± 0.2040 km2) had the largest. Approximately 25% of Mediterranean fully protected areas are larger than 2 times the size of the largest home range recorded. Fish densities were significantly higher when fully protected areas were larger than the home range, while no change in density occurred when home ranges were larger than fully protected areas. These results display a direct link between the effectiveness of fully protected areas and species' home range, suggesting that fully protected areas of at least 3.6 km2 may increase the density of local populations of these coastal marine species.

2010 ◽  
Vol 88 (10) ◽  
pp. 968-976 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan K. Brook

I examined the home range and habitat selection of 146 radio-collared female elk ( Cervus elaphus L., 1758) from 2002 to 2005 during the calving period (15 May to 24 June). I determined the proportion of home ranges of parturient cow elk during the calving period and the proportion of birthing sites of elk that were in either forested protected areas or the adjacent fragmented agriculture-dominated matrix in southwestern Manitoba, Canada. Overall, 73% of the minimum convex polygon home ranges were entirely within a protected area, 6% were only on farmland, and 21% included both. Home ranges including farmland and protected area (mean = 17.9 km2) were 3.8 times larger than those entirely inside a protected area (mean = 4.7 km2) or only on farmland (mean = 4.5 km2) (U = –2.79, P = 0.005). Female elk remaining solely in protected areas selected deciduous and mixedwood forest, marsh and fen, and water at the scale of the home range. Elk exclusively on farmland selected forage crops only. At the scale of the birthing site, females on farmland and those in protected areas selected only deciduous forest, and both types avoided agricultural cropland and marsh and fen. Identification of calving habitat will allow resource managers to manage bovine tuberculosis in the population more effectively.


2018 ◽  
Vol 221 ◽  
pp. 175-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Di Franco ◽  
Jeremiah G. Plass-Johnson ◽  
Manfredi Di Lorenzo ◽  
Bruno Meola ◽  
Joachim Claudet ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Andrea Petetta ◽  
Massimo Virgili ◽  
Stefano Guicciardi ◽  
Alessandro Lucchetti

AbstractStock overexploitation, bycatch, discards and gear impacts on the environment are outstanding issues for Mediterranean fisheries. The adoption of alternative fishing gears is an appealing solution to ensure a more sustainable exploitation of resources. We discuss the pros and cons of pots as alternative gears by reviewing their main designs, spatial distribution and target species in the Mediterranean basin. We assessed the technical factors affecting the catch efficiency of the different pot designs for four target species: spiny lobster, Palinurus elephas; Norway lobster, Nephrops norvegicus; common octopus, Octopus vulgaris and pandalid shrimps, Plesionika spp. We found that pot volume is important to catch Octopus; mesh size to catch Nephrops and Plesionika; entrance surface to catch Octopus, Nephrops and Plesionika; pot shape/colour and entrance shape/position to catch Octopus and Plesionika; and bait type to catch Octopus and Nephrops. The literature review shows that pot fisheries have several considerable advantages over conventional gears, especially in terms of discards, bycatch, seabed impacts (particularly compared with bottom trawls and passive set nets), size and species selectivity, gear depredation, catch quality and gear cost, besides saving time and labour. Disadvantages hampering their wider diffusion include ghost fishing, a low catch of finfish species, the narrow range of species targeted by each pot design and the current early stage of research. These data make a clear case for using pots as alternative gears to traditional ones in the Mediterranean Sea in some areas and seasons to catch certain target species.


2020 ◽  
Vol 244 ◽  
pp. 108531 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan J. Bennett ◽  
Antonio Calò ◽  
Antonio Di Franco ◽  
Federico Niccolini ◽  
Daniela Marzo ◽  
...  

Crustaceana ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 92 (4) ◽  
pp. 463-476
Author(s):  
Vincenzo M. Giacalone ◽  
Arturo Zenone ◽  
Fabio Badalamenti ◽  
Javier Ciancio ◽  
Gaspare Buffa ◽  
...  

Abstract A specific study has been carried out for the first time to investigate the homing capability and daily home range of the spiny lobster Palinurus elephas by means of ultrasonic telemetry. Nine lobsters collected in the Capo Gallo — Isola delle Femmine marine protected area (northwestern Sicily, central Mediterranean) were tagged with miniaturized transmitters and released at a single site inside the protected area. The lobsters were monitored with the purpose of calculating their horizontal and vertical positions, analysing their movement patterns to assess their homing capability, and calculating their daily home range. Five lobsters moved back close to the capture sites within the first 20 hours after release (‘homed’). The remaining four lobsters ‘relocated’ to a different refuge. Homed lobsters had a larger home range than relocated lobsters. This study provides the first description of a homing pattern with high spatial resolution in the wild European spiny lobster as inferred by ultrasonic telemetry.


2002 ◽  
Vol 23 (s1) ◽  
pp. 190-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simonetta Fraschetti ◽  
Antonio Terlizzi ◽  
Fiorenza Micheli ◽  
Lisandro Benedetti-Cecchi ◽  
Ferdinando Boero

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosario Badalamenti ◽  
Francesco Tiralongo ◽  
Vincenzo Arizza ◽  
Sabrina Lo Brutto

Abstract A search from different kinds of sources has been carried out to review the incidence of Physalia physalis, the Portuguese man-of-war, in the Mediterranean Sea; scientific and grey literature, social media, zoological museums were accessed. The records of the species were considered validated if documented with images or collected specimens. It was possible to date the putative first record of Physalia physalis in the Mediterranean Sea, thanks to a couple of colonies preserved in a historical collection, originating from the Gulf of Naples in 1914. Some massive strandings occurred in localities of the Alboran Sea, area of entrance from the Atlantic from where the species spread mainly along the Sicilian waters, in the central Mediterranean Sea. The records from the Italian maritime regions were then subdivided into three categories of risk according to the season of occurrence. These categories were created to assign a level of danger for swimmers to the sightings of Physalia physalis. The increasing sightings of such a poisonous organism in coastal waters can represent a risk to human health, and also to all those activities linked to the marine tourism sector. The involvement of citizens and touristic structures for the early detection of Physalia physalis can play a key role in preventing encounters with the species, allowing marine tourist facilities to operate within a range of reasonable security.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 31-44
Author(s):  
Luca Giuseppe Costanzo ◽  
Giuliana Marletta ◽  
Giuseppina Alongi

Biological invasions are considered one of the main threats for biodiversity. In the last decades, more than 60 macroalgae have been introduced in the Mediterranean Sea, causing serious problems in coastal areas. Nevertheless, the impacts of alien macroalgae in deep subtidal systems have been poorly studied, especially in the coralligenous habitats of the eastern coast of Sicily (Italy). Therefore, within the framework of the programme “Progetto Operativo di Monitoraggio (P.O.M.)” of the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), the aim of the present study was to gain knowledge on the alien macroalgae present in coralligenous habitats of the Marine Protected Area (MPA) Isole Ciclopi, along the Ionian coast of Sicily. By Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) videos and destructive samples analysed in the laboratory, five alien species were identified: Caulerpa cylindracea, Antithamnion amphigeneum, Asparagopsis armata, Bonnemaisonia hamifera, and Lophocladia lallemandii. Since A. amphigeneum was previously reported only in the western Mediterranean and Adriatic Sea, the present report represents the first record of this species in the eastern Mediterranean. The ROV surveys showed that the alien species do not have a high coverage and do not appear to be invasive in the coralligenous area of the MPA. Since ocean temperatures are predicted to increase as climate change continues and alien species are favoured by warming of the Mediterranean Sea, the risk of biotic homogenisation caused by the spread of alien species is realistic. Therefore, further studies are needed to assess the incidence and invasiveness of alien species in phytobenthic assemblages of coralligenous in the MPA.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giulia Piazza ◽  
Valentina A. Bracchi ◽  
Antonio Langone ◽  
Agostino N. Meroni ◽  
Daniela Basso

Abstract. The B / Ca ratio in calcareous marine species is informative of past seawater CO32− concentrations, but scarce data exist on B / Ca in coralline algae (CA). Recent studies suggest influences of temperature and growth rates on B / Ca, the effect of which could be critical for the reconstructions of surface ocean pH and atmospheric pCO2. In this paper, we present the first LA-ICP-MS analyses of Mg, Sr, Li and B in the CA Lithothamnion corallioides collected from different geographic settings and depths across the Mediterranean Sea and in the Atlantic Ocean. We produced the first data on temperature proxies (Mg, Li and Sr / Ca) and B / Ca in a CA species grown in different Basins (the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean), from shallow to deep waters (12 m, 40 m, 45 m and 66 m depth). We tested the B / Ca correlation with temperature proxies and growth rates, in order to evaluate their possible effect on B incorporation. Our results showed a growth rate influence on B / Ca, especially in the deepest sample (Pontian Isl., Italy; 66 m) and in the shallowest sample (Morlaix, Atlantic coast of France; 12 m), where the growth rates were respectively 0.11 mm/yr and 0.13 mm/yr and the B / Ca was respectively 462.8 ± 49.2 μmol/mol and 726.9 ± 102.8 μmol/mol. A positive correlation between B / Ca and the temperature proxies was found only in Morlaix, where the seasonal temperature variation (ΔT) was the highest (8.90 °C). These pieces of evidence suggest that growth rates, triggered by the different ΔT and light availability across depth, affect the B incorporation in L. corallioides.


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