Stylasterid corals are known to be fundamental habitat-formers in both deep and shallow waters. Their tridimensional structure enhances habitat complexity by creating refuges for a variety of organisms and by acting as basibionts for many other invertebrates, including sponges. Porifera represent crucial components of marine benthic assemblages and, in Antarctica, they often dominate benthic communities. Here, we explore the s...

Group living is widespread and beneficial to metazoans. It improves protection and survival opportunities, reinforcing interspecific competitiveness. Benthic cnidarians often colonize large surfaces. Evidence of collective capture and exploitation of large prey by small, clumped polyps suggests that aggregation is functional to access food resources hardly achievable by isolated individuals. In turn, the chance to catch large...

The feeding upon large animals—even larger than the predator—by benthic cnidarians has been reported from many ecosystems but never exhaustively studied to date. By reviewing 38 papers on this topic, this review aims to recap the observations on the predatory behaviour of polyps, to establish feeding plasticity boundaries and to understand the contribute of this trophic strategy to the benthic–pelagic coupling. The reviewed do...

Both wild and reared bivalves can host hydroids from the Eirenidae family which settle on the soft body parts of their host. Thousands of hydroids have been observed on a single bivalve, and often have severe detrimental effects on the host. However, this relationship has received little attention in aquaculture research, which is probably due to a lack of baseline data. An extensive review was conducted (i) to show the curren...

The northern Adriatic Sea (NAS) hosts numerous biogenic subtidal reefs that are considered biodiversity hotspots. Several studies have already investigated the origin and biodiversity of these reefs. However, many of them are still unexplored and further knowledge is needed for their conservation. Here, the spatial variability, epibenthic community structure, and environmental features that characterize these habitats were inv...

Marine heat waves (MHWs) are affecting corals populations, advocating their inclusion in restoration actions since conservation measures may be not sufficient. Cladocora caespitosa is a Mediterranean reef-building, long-living species, with low recruitment rate and high juvenile mortality, leading to the need for its inclusion in international and European legislations. The aim of this study, conducted in the southern Tyrrheni...

Modular colonial benthic organisms exhibit high phenotypic plasticity, which is considered an effective strategy when faced with fluctuations in abiotic and biotic factors. However, when environmental changes occur abruptly, organisms’ adaptive capabilities can be limited, leading to the death of some colonies or to mass mortalities. Additionally, a decrease in body size has been proposed as one of the most common responses in...

The series of technological advances that occurred over the past two decades allowed photogrammetry-based approaches to achieve their actual potential, giving birth to one of the most popular and applied procedures: structure from motion (SfM). The technique expanded rapidly to different environments, from the early ground-based and aerial applications in terrestrial scenarios, to underground and underwater surveys. Neverthele...

This work focuses on the carbonate factories constituting the Pietra di Finale Fm cropping out in the Ligurian Alps. This unit constituted a mixed carbonate–siliciclastic coastal wedge developed during the Middle Miocene. The carbonate factories characterizing the coastal wedge of the Pietra di Finale clearly differ from those of the coastal mixed systems and carbonate platforms developing during the Miocene elsewhere in the M...

Scleractinian corals provide habitats for a broad variety of cryptofauna, which in turn may contribute to the overall functioning of coral symbiomes. Among these invertebrates, hydrozoans belonging to the genus Zanclea represent an increasingly known and ecologically important group of coral symbionts. In this study, we analysed 321 Zanclea colonies associated with 31 coral genera collected from 11 localities across the Indo-P...

Sandy beaches provide several ecosystem services such as coastal protection and resilience, water filtration and nutrient mineralization. Beaches also represent a hub for social, cultural and economic relationships as well as educational activities. Increasing urbanization, recreational activities and mechanical beach cleaning represent major anthropogenic disturbances on sandy beaches leading to loss of biodiversity as well a...

Hydrozoans of the genus Zanclea have been acknowledged only recently as a fundamental component of the highly diverse fauna associated with reef‐building scleractinian corals. Although widely distributed in coral reefs and demonstrated to be important in protecting corals from predation and diseases, the biodiversity of these hydrozoans remains enigmatic due to the paucity of available morphological characters, incomplete morp...