Search Results (9)

Integrating traditional herbal extracts into modern biomaterials offers a promising route for advanced wound care. A standardized Buddleja globosa Hope extract (BG-126), recognized for its therapeutic value, was incorporated into polymeric scaffolds with variable composition to explore their potential in promoting wound healing and controlling infections. This work aimed to identify the polymeric composition of a scaffold with BG-126 that maximizes its compatibility and antimicrobial properties. Scaffolds were developed by lyophilization using a Box–Behnken design (BBD) with chitosan, hyaluronic acid, and gelatin content as study factors. Thirteen scaffold formulations were tested for their antimicrobial activity against Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, including biofilm forms, as well as for their biocompatibility with normal human fibroblasts. Structural and physical properties, such as the moisture content and swelling capacity, were evaluated. The best-performing scaffold was analyzed using Raman spectroscopy. The chitosan content was strongly associated with antimicrobial efficacy, while gelatin enhanced fibroblast compatibility (R² ≥ 0.9). No correlations were identified between the polymeric content and biofilm inhibition or physical properties. BG-126-loaded scaffolds reduced planktonic and biofilm proliferation and improved fibroblast compatibility compared to the control scaffold (without BG-126). The results support the rational design of botanical-loaded scaffolds with targeted properties for wound healing. Full article

Over the past few decades, various causal connections between commercial small pelagic fish species and gelatinous zooplankton have been reported in the Black Sea, which affect the pelagic ecosystem. Recently, moon jellyfish regained dominance among gelatinous plankton; however, biomass fluctuations and interactions with small pelagic fish remain poorly understood. During the summers of 2019–2022, scientific pelagic trawl surveys in the Western Black Sea enabled simultaneous monitoring of small pelagic fish biomass, with sprat as the key species and moon jellyfish as an incidental catch. In total, 153 trawl hauls were conducted across four depth strata from 15 to 100 m, and a “swept area” method was used for biomass estimation. The sprat stock biomass ranged from 10,698 to 29,177 t, with an average value of 19,432 ± 4834 t. The total biomass of moon jellyfish was 2002 ± 868.73 t, and dense aggregations were observed in the coastal waters during certain years. Two scenarios of spatial interactions between planktivorous species were identified and linked to the formation of A. aurita aggregations. We found that changes in jellyfish density were associated with weak-to-moderate effects on the spatial distribution of sprat assemblages in coastal areas. Full article

Non-indigenous species (NIS) are of concern for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem functioning. We present an updated list of NIS, including cryptogenic species, from Danish marine waters containing 123 species. Benthic invertebrates (36%) and phytoplankton (28%) dominate the list, but fish (15%) and macroalgae (13%) are also important. The Limfjord in Northern Jutland emerges as a hotspot for the introduction of NIS. Data from multiple sources were included, i.e., the National Monitoring Program (NOVANA), the National Fish Atlas project, the citizen science project Arter.dk, research articles, and annual national reports of the ICES working group ITMO. Forty-six NIS species were subject to expert judging using a modified Harmonia protocol; 19 were found to fulfil the four selected criteria identifying a species as being ‘invasive’. Additionally, 38 species, not yet recorded in Danish waters, were evaluated using the same method, and 31 were found to fulfil the ‘invasive’ criteria. For nine selected species, introduction history, distribution maps, and time-series diagrams are presented. Our data document that the national monitoring efforts should be expanded to record macrozooplankton, coastal fish, and mobile epibenthic species. Furthermore, the national data repository, Arter.dk, should be expanded to enable more detailed documentation of new NIS records. Full article

In order to better understand the cold dome influence on zooplankton community structure, zooplankton samples were collected during the southwest monsoon prevailing period from the southeast waters of the East China Sea. To reduce the bias caused by different sampling months, the samples were collected in June 2018 and in June 2019. An obvious cold dome activity was proven by images of remote sensing satellites during the June 2018 cruise. In contrast, the research area was much affected by open sea high temperature and water masses during the June 2019 cruise. Significant differences in water conditions were demonstrated by surface seawater temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen concentrations between the two cruises. Nevertheless, no significant differences were observed concerning mesozooplankton in general, copepods, large crustaceans, other crustaceans, and pelagic molluscs between the June 2018 and June 2019 cruises. However, the mean abundance of gelatinous plankton was significantly different with 1213.08 ± 850.46 (ind./m³) and 2955.93 ± 1904.42 (ind./m³) in June 2018 and June 2019, respectively. Noteworthy, a significantly lower mean abundance of meroplankton, with 60.78 ± 47.32 (ind./m³), was identified in June 2018 compared to 464.45 ± 292.80 (ind./m³) in June 2019. Pearson’s correlation analysis also showed a highly positive correlation of gelatinous plankton and meroplankton with sea surface temperature (p < 0.01). The variation of salinity showed a significant negative correlation with gelatinous plankton abundance (p < 0.05), and a highly significant negative correlation with the abundance of meroplankton (p < 0.01). Only the abundance of meroplankton showed a positive correlation with dissolved oxygen concentrations (p < 0.05). The copepod communities were separated in two groups which were consistent with sampling cruises in 2018 and 2019. Based on the specificity and occupancy of copepods, Macrosetella gracilis, Oithona rigida, Cosmocalanus darwinii, Paracalanus parvus, and Calocalanus pavo were selected as indicator species for the cold dome effect in the study area during June 2018, whereas the indicator species of warm water impact in the open sea were Calanopia elliptica, Subeucalanus pileatus, Paracalanus aculeatus, and Acrocalanus gibber during the June 2019 cruise. Full article

The study of natural selection and local adaptation is a thriving field of research. Local adaptation is driven by environment components and results in locally adapted phenotypes with higher fitness relative to other phenotypes from other locations in the species range. Tests of local adaptations have traditionally been done using transplant experiments, but the advent of next-generation sequencing methods have allowed the study of local adaptation to move from a phenotypic to a genomic approach. By using genome scans and state-of-the-art statistical tests, researchers can identify genes putatively under selection and study the genomic architecture of local adaptation, which often includes the observation of clustering of adaptive genes concentrated in fewer genomic regions known as “genomic islands of divergence”. The two species of North Atlantic eels, the European and the American eel, are excellent species for studying selection since they are panmictic and present large population sizes, show a wide distribution range across extremely heterogenous environments, and are subject to high mortalities. We reviewed studies of natural selection and local adaptation in American eel, European eel, between life cycle stages, between European and American eel. Finally, we discussed genome architecture in relation to local adaptation in eels and the role of both genetic (i.e., local adaptation) and non-genetic (i.e., phenotypic plasticity) in the survival of eels across their distribution range. Full article

Biodiversity is a broad concept that encompasses the diversity of nature, from the genetic to the habitat scale, and ensures the proper functioning of ecosystems. The Mediterranean Sea, one of the world’s most biodiverse marine basins, faces major threats, such as overexploitation of resources, pollution and climate change. Here we provide the first multi-taxa inventory of marine organisms and coastal terrestrial flora recorded in southeastern Salento (Ionian Sea, Italy), realized during the project “Biodiversity MARE Tricase”, which provided the first baseline of species living in the area. Sampling was carried out by SCUBA and free diving, fishing gears, and citizen science from 0 to 70 m. Overall, 697 taxa were found between March 2016 and October 2017, 94% of which were identified to the species level. Of these, 19 taxa represented new records for the Ionian Sea (36 additional new records had been reported in previous publications on specific groups, namely Porifera and Mollusca Heterobranchia), and two findings represented the easternmost records in the Mediterranean Sea (Helicosalpa virgula and Lampea pancerina). For eight other taxa, our findings represented the only locality in the Ionian Sea, besides the Straits of Messina. In addition to the species list, phenological events (e.g., blooms, presence of reproductive traits and behaviour) were also reported, with a focus on gelatinous plankton. Our results reveal that even for a relatively well-known area, current biodiversity knowledge may still be limited, and targeted investigations are needed to fill the gaps. Further research is needed to understand the distribution and temporal trends of Mediterranean biodiversity and to provide baseline data to identify ongoing and future changes. Full article

The present study illustrates zooplankton dynamics in relation to environmental factors from the surrounding area of Tiaowei Island based on ten seasonal sampling cruises over three years. A total of 116 species of zooplankton were collected with a predominance of Copepoda (mainly consisting of Centropagidae, Oithonidae, Acartia, Labidocera and Paracalanus), accounting for 31.6 % of the total number of species. The diversity indices indicated a relatively high richness, abundance and evenness of zooplankton ranging from 2.794 to 4.012 on the Shannon–Wiener index for each cruise. More than 20 species of Cnidaria medusae are found as gelatinous organisms, which not only compete with fish but also potentially cause disasters. Significant seasonal variations were detected in both the zooplankton structure and environmental variables. NMDS illustrated a highly overlapping community structure in spring, autumn and winter, while the zooplankton composition in the summer was different from that of the other three seasons with a higher diversity index. Meanwhile, out of thirteen environmental parameters, eight varied significantly among seasons but there were no significant variations among stations. The biota–environmental relationship following a redundancy analysis revealed that water temperature, pH, salinity, dissolved oxygen and suspended particulate composition were the main environmental parameters, seasonally impacting the zooplankton communities. Planktonic larvae (such as nauplius larvae and branchyura zoea) and some zooplankton (including Corophium sinensis and Oithonasimilis) were significantly vulnerable to the dynamics of suspended particulate composition and water temperature. Full article

Global change has led to manifold changes of marine ecosystems and biodiversity world-wide. While it has been shown that certain jellyfish and comb jelly species have increased regionally, it remains to be investigated if this is a general trend or localized phenomenon. Especially for the economically important Baltic Sea, which is characterized by an extreme physical environmental gradient, this question has not been addressed to date. Here we present a detailed account of the gelatinous macro-zooplankton community including their physiological tolerance towards abiotic conditions and resulting distribution ranges in the Baltic. We show that the arrival and establishment of non-indigenous species has led to a rising importance of jellyfish and comb jellies in the Baltic. This accounts for the comb jelly Mnemiopsis leidyi, which was first observed in Northern Europe in 2005, as well as for the hydromedusae Blackfordia virginica, first sighted in 2014. Both species have been shown to attain high population densities with pronounced grazing impact in other invasive regions. Given the current and anticipated changes of the physical environment of the Baltic Sea, especially ongoing warming, amplification of their impact can be expected. Full article

Marine plankton abundance and dynamics in the open and interior ocean is still an unknown field. The knowledge of gelatinous zooplankton distribution is especially challenging, because this type of plankton has a very fragile structure and cannot be directly sampled using traditional net based techniques. To overcome this shortcoming, Computer Vision techniques can be successfully used for the automatic monitoring of this group.This paper presents the GUARD1 imaging system, a low-cost stand-alone instrument for underwater image acquisition and recognition of gelatinous zooplankton, and discusses the performance of three different methodologies, Tikhonov Regularization, Support Vector Machines and Genetic Programming, that have been compared in order to select the one to be run onboard the system for the automatic recognition of gelatinous zooplankton. The performance comparison results highlight the high accuracy of the three methods in gelatinous zooplankton identification, showing their good capability in robustly selecting relevant features. In particular, Genetic Programming technique achieves the same performances of the other two methods by using a smaller set of features, thus being the most efficient in avoiding computationally consuming preprocessing stages, that is a crucial requirement for running on an autonomous imaging system designed for long lasting deployments, like the GUARD1. The Genetic Programming algorithm has been installed onboard the system, that has been operationally tested in a two-months survey in the Ligurian Sea, providing satisfactory results in terms of monitoring and recognition performances. Full article