The Collective Article “New Mediterranean Biodiversity Records” of the Mediterranean Marine Science journal offers the means to publish biodiversity records in the Mediterranean Sea. The current article is divided per countries, listed according to a Mediterranean west-east geographic position. New biodiversity data are reported for 7 different countries, although one species hereby reported from Malta is overall new for the e...

Heat shock proteins (HSPs), also known as stress proteins and extrinsic chaperones, are a suite of highly conserved proteins of varying molecular weight ( c . 16–100 kDa) produced in all cellular organisms when they are exposed to stress. They develop following up‐regulation of specific genes, whose transcription is mediated by the interaction of heat shock factors with heat shock elements in gene promoter regions. HSPs functi...

Clinical, gross and histopathological investigations were carried out into large‐scale mortalities on eastern Mediterranean bluefin tuna, Thunnus thynnus (L.), farms. Fish showed only nervous signs and darkened colour. At post‐mortem the liver was bronze coloured and the pyloric area waxy in consistency. There was no evidence of any other gross pathology. Histopathology showed severe hepatic necrosis and lipidosis. Peri‐pancre...

Melano‐macrophage centres, also known as macrophage aggregates, are distinctive groupings of pigment‐containing cells within the tissues of heterothermic vertebrates. In fish they are normally located in the stroma of the haemopoietic tissue of the spleen and the kidney, although in amphibians and reptiles, and some fish, they are also found in the liver. They may also develop in association with chronic inflammatory lesions e...

Two investigations were carried out with 150 g gilthead sea bream Sparus aurata to determine the relative activity of six digestive enzymes (pepsin, trypsin, chymotrypsin, carboxypeptidase A, carboxypeptidase B and amylase) and the pH variation in the lumen of different parts of the gut of fish fed one or two meals per day. Pepsin activity was found exclusively in the stomach, whereas activities of the other enzymes studied we...