Rosalinda incrustans (Kramp, 1947) is a poorly known, deep-sea capitate hydrozoan whose biology, morphology, and ecological traits have remained largely obscure due to the rarity of collected material and its small, inconspicuous epibiontic habitus. Since its original description, the species has been collected only twice and recorded two additional times with Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs), invariably observed as an epibio...

Acesta excavata is one of the largest and ecologically relevant bivalves along continental margins and is often associated with cold‐water coral assemblages of the upper bathyal zone. Like other habitat‐forming species, A. excavata contributes to increasing the secondary substrata and provides opportunities for the colonization and feeding of other sessile and mobile organisms. Despite most of the bivalves producing byssus bei...

Bryozoan assemblages of three mesophotic habitats, recently found in the Adriatic and Ionian Seas, were investigated in terms of species composition and diversity, colonial growth forms, and species ecological affinity, with the purposes to analyze variations and similarities between the different bioconstructions and to compare the mesophotic assemblages with those of other benthic habitats. Bryozoans came from three sites of...

The present work focused on the taxonomic composition, spatial distributions, and temporal distributions of the sponge fauna from the main lagoon systems of southern Italy: Lesina, Varano, Taranto, Alimini, Faro, Ganzirri, Tindari and Marsala. Overall, 62 sponge species were recorded, belonging to the classes Demospongiae (52 species), Calcarea (8) and Homoscleromorpha (2). All the lagoon systems studied hosted sponges, even i...

Macro- and megafauna were recorded in the submarine Bari Canyon (southern Adriatic Sea, Mediterranean Sea) during an oceanographic cruise carried out in May-June 2012 and an experimental fishing survey conducted in November 2013. During the former, a total of 20 benthic samples were taken using a Van Veen grab at depths between 268 and 770 m and 4 deployments of a baited lander, for about 43 hours of video records, were carrie...

The demosponge Tethya citrina Sarà & Melone was subjected to long-term aquarium farming, considering that several species belonging to this genus are a rich source of useful bioactive metabolites. The rearing method in the present research was mainly based on applying parameters taken from the current literature. The sponge's biological activity was assessed in terms of survival and growth over time; status of filtering appara...