The Toarcian Posidonia Shale and contemporaneously formed sediments document an interval of black shale sedimentation and organic matter accumulation in the Central European Basin System (CEBS), lasting a few hundred thousand years up to 7 myr. The remarkable stable organo-detrital depositional regime in the deeper basin was accompanied by repetitive changes from organo-detrital to detrital depositional regimes in the shallowe...

The increasing prevalence of non-indigenous species (NIS) in marine ecosystems poses significant challenges for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem management. Advances in molecular techniques enable early detection and long-term monitoring of such taxa, especially when coupled with spatio-temporally wide sampling by networks such as the European ARMS Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (ARMS-MBON). This initiative per...

Throughout the Latest Triassic and the Early Jurassic, major changes in paleogeography, climate and eustatic sea-level impacted on the development of shelf depositional environments. Secular trends in environmental conditions were punctuated by transient perturbations that occurred in relation to large-scale volcanic events, such as the emplacement of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province at the Triassic/Jurassic boundary and...

This is a phylogeographical study of Juxtacribrilina mutabilis, a recently described bryozoan from Japan with sightings in Sweden, Norway, and Maine (US), to test how fast and far it has expanded across Europe in recent years. J. mutabilis settles easily on ship hulls, making it a useful model organism for studying long-distance invasion pathways. The study was conducted using Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures (ARMS) to mo...

Marine ecosystems, ranging from coastal seas and wetlands to the open ocean, accommodate a wealth of biological diversity from small microorganisms to large mammals. This biodiversity and its associated ecosystem function occurs across complex spatial and temporal scales and is not yet fully understood. Given the wide range of external pressures on the marine environment, this knowledge is crucial for enabling effective conser...

We investigated the use of eDNA metabarcoding for supplementing traditional diver-based monitoring of biodiversity of marine boulder reefs within the photic zone. The applied sampling design made it possible to evaluate the usefulness of eDNA monitoring as a supplement for traditional monitoring. Specifically, this study aimed to (1) assess the local influence of boulder reefs on biodiversity across the North Sea to Baltic Sea...

Marine hard-bottom communities are undergoing severe change under the influence of multiple drivers, notably climate change, extraction of natural resources, pollution and eutrophication, habitat degradation, and invasive species. Monitoring marine biodiversity in such habitats is, however, challenging as it typically involves expensive, non-standardized, and often destructive sampling methods that limit its scalability. Diffe...

In order to elucidate the evolutionary history and the population structure of the members of the phylum Cycliophora, which live commensally on three species of lobsters, we studied sequence variation in the mitochondrial gene cyctochrome c oxidase subunit I. Overall 242 sequences from 16 locations on both coasts of the North Atlantic, including the North Sea and the Mediterranean, were analysed, revealing 28 haplotypes, with...