Version 1
: Received: 8 September 2023 / Approved: 8 September 2023 / Online: 11 September 2023 (09:19:24 CEST)
Version 2
: Received: 25 October 2023 / Approved: 26 October 2023 / Online: 26 October 2023 (12:31:25 CEST)
Version 3
: Received: 21 March 2024 / Approved: 21 March 2024 / Online: 22 March 2024 (16:54:35 CET)
How to cite:
Bracchetti, L.; Capriotti, M.; Fazzini, M.; Cocci, P.; Palermo, F. A. Effects of Climate Crisis on Marine Ecosystem: Mass Mortality Event of the Mediterranean Mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis) in the Middle Adriatic. Preprints2023, 2023090613. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202309.0613.v2
Bracchetti, L.; Capriotti, M.; Fazzini, M.; Cocci, P.; Palermo, F. A. Effects of Climate Crisis on Marine Ecosystem: Mass Mortality Event of the Mediterranean Mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis) in the Middle Adriatic. Preprints 2023, 2023090613. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202309.0613.v2
Bracchetti, L.; Capriotti, M.; Fazzini, M.; Cocci, P.; Palermo, F. A. Effects of Climate Crisis on Marine Ecosystem: Mass Mortality Event of the Mediterranean Mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis) in the Middle Adriatic. Preprints2023, 2023090613. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202309.0613.v2
APA Style
Bracchetti, L., Capriotti, M., Fazzini, M., Cocci, P., & Palermo, F. A. (2023). Effects of Climate Crisis on Marine Ecosystem: Mass Mortality Event of the Mediterranean Mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis) in the Middle Adriatic. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202309.0613.v2
Chicago/Turabian Style
Bracchetti, L., Paolo Cocci and Francesco Alessandro Palermo. 2023 "Effects of Climate Crisis on Marine Ecosystem: Mass Mortality Event of the Mediterranean Mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis) in the Middle Adriatic" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202309.0613.v2
Abstract
The effects of the climate crisis are affecting ecosystems at different scales and magnitudes. This paper focuses on a massive Mediterranean mussel die-off observed along the middle Italian Adriatic coast in the summer of 2022. We considered the possible environmental causes of this phenomenon and carried out a climatic analysis of the last decade. We performed field surveys in different locations along a 16 Km coastal stretch (from Martinsicuro (TE) on the South, to Grottammare (AP) on the North). The study area includes two marine Sites of Community Importance under the European Natura 2000 network. The mussels die-off has interested practically all the natural mussel-beds colonizing the study area. Mussels are sessile filter-feeding organisms inhabiting the intertidal zone, therefore, are highly exposed to variations in environmental conditions such as temperature and nutrient load. We discuss the possible causes of this die-off, proposing that high temperature and the scarce availability of food acted simultaneously as stress factors, generating local unsustainable living conditions for this species.
Biology and Life Sciences, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Received:
26 October 2023
Commenter:
Luca Bracchetti
Commenter's Conflict of Interests:
Author
Comment:
All the authors have been involved with the review, have approved it, and agree to its resubmission.The article has undergone changes and more detail about heatwaves and mussel’s thermal threshold have been added; moreover, to quantify the observed heatwaves we performed a new sea surface temperature analysis of a broader time series than the previous one. We also investigated additional possible causes of the mussel die-off and considered new ecological data.
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Commenter: Luca Bracchetti
Commenter's Conflict of Interests: Author