Dear Colleagues,

Human activities, such as fisheries, aquaculture, industrial, and agricultural pollution, and artificial structures, greatly impact plankton communities, by modifying the networks of interaction between their main components, i.e., phytoplankton and zooplankton. The perturbation of phytoplankton–zooplankton coupling may modify the structure of aquatic food webs, and, as a consequence, the biological carbon fluxes of the plankton itself, all over the water column, from the nekton to the benthos. Investigating how and to what extent human pressures cause alterations at the phytoplankton–zooplankton interface is crucial to preserving aquatic biodiversity and ecosystem services.

In this context, we invite you to submit contributions to our Special Issue, entitled “The Phytoplankton–Zooplankton Link under Anthropogenic Pressures”.

This topical collection is open to high-quality contributions relating human activities and plankton biodiversity, structure, and function, response to direct or indirect anthropogenic stressors, food web efficiency and variation in time and space, resistance and resilience of plankton communities, adaptation, and acclimation to pollutants and changing thermal and hydrogeologic regimes. Contributions pertaining to either marine or freshwater systems are welcome.

We encourage you to submit works providing a context for the interactive and cumulative effects of multiple stressors on the phytoplankton–zooplankton interactions, but case studies will also be taken into consideration.

Authors may contact the Guest Editors before submitting their manuscripts to see if the work is suitable for this Special Issue.

Dr. Domenico D'Alelio
Dr. Luigi Caputi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• plankton
• biological interactions
• food webs
• anthropogenic impact
• aquatic biodiversity

Title: Anthropogenic threats over plankton community in coastal and transitional environments: a review

Author: Luigi Caputi, Domenico D'Alelio

Abstract: Coastal and transitional environments (such as gulfs, bays, estuaries and lagoons)  play a vital role in terms of ecosystem  services, such as but not limited to, provision of food, protection against extreme meteorological events, anthropogenic carbon sink, and filtering of pollutants. When healthy, these ecosystems also provide a multitude of goods (water, shelter, food, fuel, fiber, raw materials, medicine, genetic materials) essential to human well-being. Most of these services and goods rely on the water column and, in particular, the microscopic component of pelagic ecological communities, i.e., plankton. In virtue of the burgeoning overpopulation along the coastlines worldwide, coastal and transitional systems are over-exploited , degraded, and reduced in their macroscopic features, from the physical-chemical conditions of the water column to the conservation status of iconic species and habitats. Though, information on the impact of anthropogenic pressures on planktonic organisms is still scanty and fragmented. Herein, we summarize the state-of-art of research regarding the planktonic community living in the water column of coastal systems, with a special focus on estuaries and lagoons, under high human pressure,  reporting on the implications of human-induced threats on provided services and goods supported by plankton. Literature data indicate that human-forcing may effectively alter estuarine and lagoonary ecosystem structure and function, unpairing the zooplankton-phytoplankton link, i.e.,the main trophic process occurring in those communities and sustaining coastal ecosystems. Changes in the dominance and lifestyle of key planktonic players, plus the invasion of ‘alien’ species, and consequent regime shifts at ecosystem functioning level, are among the most common outcomes of human disturbance.