Fishes are key component in the trophic web of Antarctic marine ecosystems, representing food for top predators, such as other fish, birds and mammals. In particular, fishes are among the most important prey of the Weddell seal, Leptonychotes weddellii . Several studies reported data on the diet and foraging ecology of Weddell seals all around the Antarctic continent, from the Ross and Weddell Seas to the South Orkney and the...

The single mental barbel is a distinctive feature of the benthic Antarctic fishes of the «cryonotothenioid» subfamily Artedidraconinae. These barbels are unusual because their primary sensory modality is tactility, not chemosensation as in most other teleosts. They also exhibit considerable interspecific and intraspecific variation in length and in the appearance of the terminal expansion and its epidermis. Barbels range from...

We addressed the impact of angling in two Mediterranean inshore sites by conducting a tag-recapture study on caught-and-released black scorpionfish ( Scorpaena porcus ) and giant goby ( Gobius cobitis ). We assessed the relationship between the fish vitality at release and the main factors affecting it, i.e. air exposure time, water temperature, fish length and handling. Then, we used conventional fish tags to study fish survi...

The slender scalyhead Trematomus lepidorhinus and the scaly rockcod T. loennbergii are closely related species with similar streamlined body morphology, epibenthic lifestyle and ecological niche. They are distributed in relatively deep waters on the continental shelf and slope of the Weddell Sea, although with some differences in preferential depth of occurrence. As previously reported, the peak of abundance of T. loennbergii...

The common sole, Solea solea (Linnaeus, 1758), one of the main fishery demersal resources in the Mediterranean, coexists in the Adriatic Sea with the Egyptian sole, Solea aegyptiaca (Chabanaud, 1927), which is a congeneric and cryptic species. This study, for the first time in this basin, investigated the spatial distribution of the Egyptian sole by combining all data available from fishery dependent and independent sampling a...

Antarctic notothenioid fishes show wide adaptive morphological radiation, linked to habitat preferences and food composition. However, direct comparisons of phenotypic variability and feeding habits are still lacking, particularly in stages inhabiting nearshore areas. To assess these relationships, we collected juveniles and adults of the most common benthic species inhabiting shallow waters off the South Shetland Islands with...

Although fishing is considered the primary cause of the decline in fish populations, increasing evidence of the significant role of climate change has been provided recently in the Mediterranean Sea, which shows one of the highest warming trends in the world. In this area, the most important environmental driver is represented by the increase in seawater temperature. Though several studies have addressed the effects of sea war...

Despite the general belief that the Southern Ocean harbors low fish biodiversity, the Weddell Sea hosts one of the richest fish communities in the region. Parallelly, the Weddell Sea is also known for the presence of dense and diverse macrobenthos. Most macrobenthic invertebrates, such as gorgonians, sponges and bryozoans, are considered ecosystem engineers as they generate a three-dimensional structure that increases habitat...

Nowadays, overexploitation and climate change are among the major threats to fish production all over the world. In this study, we focused our attention on the Adriatic Sea (AS), a shallow semi-enclosed sub-basin showing the highest exploitation level and warming trend over the last decades within the Mediterranean Sea. We investigated the life history traits and population dynamics of the cold-water species whiting (Merlangiu...