Cetacean Strandings and Museum Collections: A Focus on Sicily Island Crossroads for Mediterranean Species

Abstract

The study examined the extent of the cetacean strandings in Italy, with a particular focus on Sicily Island. The paper aimed to contribute to the description of a pattern that contemplates the “regular and rare” cetacean species passage along the Sicilian coast. The estimate of marine cetacean strandings was extrapolated from the National Strandings Data Bank (BDS—Banca Dati Spiaggiamenti) and evaluated according to a subdivision in three coastal subregions: the Tyrrhenian sub-basin (northern Sicilian coast), the Ionian sub-basin (eastern Sicilian coast), and the Channel of Sicily (southern Sicilian coast). Along the Italian coast, more than 4880 stranding events have been counted in the period 1990–2019. Most of these were recorded in five Italian regions: Apulia, Sicily, Sardinia, Tuscany, and Calabria. Approximately 15% of the recorded strandings in Italy occurred on the Sicilian coast. In Sicily Island, 725 stranded cetaceans were recorded in 709 stranding events, resulting in approximately 20 carcasses every year; the total number of specimens identified to species level was 539. The distribution along the Sicilian coast was the following: 312 recorded in the Tyrrhenian sub-basin, 193 in the Ionian sub-basin, and 220 in the Channel of Sicily. Stenella coeruleoalba was the species that can be considered as the stable record along the time-lapse investigated, and some rare species have been recorded as well. The role of Sicily Island as a sentinel territory of the cetacean distribution for the central Mediterranean Sea and as a region receiving a marine resource suitable for the scientific research and cetological museum collections is discussed herein.

Looking for reliable species distribution models for low‐density cetacean species: Compared effectiveness of SDMs for G. griseus, G. melas, Z. cavirostris in the Mediterranean Sea based on long‐term fixed‐transect data

“…In the latter area, the species was considered to prefer the upper continental slope (e.g., Bearzi et al, 2011;Praca & Gannier, 2008;Laran et al, 2010Laran et al, , 2017, with a more recent use reported also of offshore areas (e.g., ACCOBAMS, 2021; Azzellino et al, 2016;Labach et al, 2015), in accordance with the prediction of this study. The species is also confirmed in the Tyrrhenian sea, around the Pontine Archipelago and along the Sicilian coast (Lo Brutto et al, 2021;Mariani et al, 2016). In the Central Mediterranean, the predicted suitable areas in eastern Sicily and in the northern Ionian Sea were in line with the findings of other studies (e.g., Cipriano et al, 2022;Monaco et al, 2016).…”

Museomics Provides Insights into Conservation and Education: The Instance of an African Lion Specimen from the Museum of Zoology “Pietro Doderlein”

“…Collections can be important to resolve taxonomic issues and reconstruct distribution patterns of species and evolutionary processes across different time frames and geographical areas [1][2][3]. The investigation of such materials is of particular importance for rare or threatened species, such as large marine or terrestrial carnivores, often stored in old collections [4][5][6].…”

The Portuguese Man-of-War Has Always Entered the Mediterranean Sea—Strandings, Sightings, and Museum Collections

“…Here we introduce a dataset of sightings, strandings, and museum records of the species in the Mediterranean Sea, and the first documented Mediterranean records, originating from the southern Tyrrhenian basin. Relevant biodiversity information can be obtained from materials and data collected in the past and preserved in the Natural History Museums, which can provide overlooked and, in many cases, still unpublished data (Tedesco et al, 2020;Lo Brutto et al, 2021). Additionally, the sightings and strandings herein reported highlight the potential role of the citizens' participatory science.…”