Patella ferruginea is an endemic limpet of the Western Mediterranean Sea, presently considered the most threatened marine macroinvertebrate in the region and included in several international conservation directives. Its populations were widespread throughout the Western Mediterranean in the late Pleistocene (Tyrrhenian period), still largely distributed until the 19th century and presently confined into small populations in f...

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) 2000/60/EC, adopted by the European Community in 2000 with the goal of maintaining and improving the aquatic environments, requires that member states achieve and maintain a good ecological status of all water bodies by 2015. In the marine context, the ecological status has to be quantified applying indexes based on appropriate key biological elements, which allow the categorization of water...