Long-term turnover of the sponge fauna in Faro Lake (North-East Sicily, Mediterranean Sea)

Abstract

The paper focuses on the long-term taxonomic composition and distribution of the shallow-water sponge fauna from the meromictic-anchialine coastal basin Faro Lake (Southern Italy), comparing recent qualitative field data with literature data over a 50-year period. The Faro Lake shallow water currently hosts 24 conspicuous species of Porifera belonging to 21 genera, 18 families, eight orders, three subclasses and two classes, i.e. Demospongiae (23) and Calcarea (one). The comparison between the present and past status of the sponge fauna showed a high turnover, with 15 new colonizers and only nine persistent species. Thirteen species reported in the literature are missing, suggesting the occurrence of remarkable changes in the faunal composition during the last 50 years. The analysis of the geographic distribution of each species allowed us to outline the prevalent North Atlantic affinity of the sponge community. Worthy of note is the new record of the alien calcareous sponge Paraleucilla magna of cryptogenic origin.

A massive update of non-indigenous species records in Mediterranean marinas

“…Its first Mediterranean records were from multiple Italian localities, first in the Ionian then in the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic Seas, followed by the Ligurian Sea and Sicily ( Longo et al, 2004 , 2012 ; Longo, Mastrototaro & Corriero, 2007 ; Bertolino et al, 2014 ; Marra et al, 2016 ). It was also reported from multiple localites in the Costa Brava region in Spain ( Guardiola, Frotscher & Uriz, 2012 , 2016 ), as well as Malta ( Zammit, Longo & Schembri, 2009 ), and Croatia ( Cvitković et al, 2013 ).…”

Microbial diversity in Mediterranean sponges as revealed by metataxonomic analysis

“…Long-term variations of biodiversity are significant signs of environmental change. Concerning the Mediterranean sea, data are available to compare possible variations in the species richness and faunal compositions, which are responsible of loss or turn-over of biodiversity 18 , 19 , 26 . Moreover, enclosed saline coastal basins, such as the case of the Faro Lake, represent good models of aquatic system to study temporal variation of sponge biodiversity 26 .…”

Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors from Marine Invertebrates

“…Their internal and external skeletons consist of bundles of spicules arranged randomly. They can have a granular, smooth, or glassy shape, and their colors can vary according to the depth of the waters in which they are located, being white-grey in deep and greener in shallow waters thanks to the presence of light that allows the development of symbiotic algae in the latter case [59]. From this demosponge, Takada et al [58] isolated two prolyl amides of polyoxygenated fatty acid, i.e., yakushinamide A (Figure 9), which displayed a moderate inhibitory effect on HDACs and sirtuins.…”

“…Their internal and external skeletons consist of bundles of spicules arranged randomly. They can have a granular, smooth, or glassy shape, and their colors can vary according to the depth of the waters in which they are located, being white-grey in deep and greener in shallow waters thanks to the presence of light that allows the development of symbiotic algae in the latter case [59]. The species of the genus Halichondria (Fleming, 1828; Demospongiae, Suberitida: Halichondriidae, Figure 10) are massive and amorphous sponges typical of rocky substrates and with a cosmopolitan distribution.…”

“…Their internal and external skeletons consist of bundles of spicules arranged randomly. They can have a granular, smooth, or glassy shape, and their colors can vary according to the depth of the waters in which they are located, being white-grey in deep and greener in shallow waters thanks to the presence of light that allows the development of symbiotic algae in the latter case [59].…”