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This study investigates the trophic diversity of fishes living in a meadow of Caulerpa prolifera on a bimonthly basis between May 2006 and April 2007 in a semi-enclosed coastal marine ecosystem of the Mediterranean Sea (Elounda Bay, Crete Island). The study area is shallow and protected from waves, and it is covered by a C. prolifera bed, characterized by high organic input and a highly diverse macrobenthic community. Feeding patterns of the fish, investigated on the basis of stomach content analyses, were described in terms of numerical abundance and frequency of occurrence of prey taxa. A total of 1642 fish individuals, belonging to 17 species, were examined. In total, 45,674 prey individuals were identified belonging to 110 prey taxa, most of which were Malacostraca including their larvae and Copepoda (41,175 individuals identified to 71 taxa). Four different trophic groups were identified: herbivorous, pelagic, benthic (hyperbenthic) and piscivorous. Trophic diversity patterns of the fish species studied were also compared to the relative availability of macrobenthic and zooplanktonic taxa during the same period in the study area. The coexistence of many different, mostly benthic but also pelagic, fishes and their juveniles implies their high trophic flexibility, which is probably important for their survival in this particular habitat. Results of the present study provide basic knowledge on trophic diversity and interactions in the marine ecosystem and, therefore, some evidence as to the protection value of this particular habitat, which is essential for the implementation of a multispecies approach to decision-makers and managers of fisheries sources of the region.
Maria Maidanou; Panayota Koulouri; Paraskevi Karachle; Christos Arvanitidis; Drosos Koutsoubas; Costas Dounas. Trophic Diversity of a Fish Community Associated with a Caulerpa prolifera (Forsskål) Meadow in a Shallow Semi-Enclosed Embayment. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering 2021, 9, 165 .
AMA StyleMaria Maidanou, Panayota Koulouri, Paraskevi Karachle, Christos Arvanitidis, Drosos Koutsoubas, Costas Dounas. Trophic Diversity of a Fish Community Associated with a Caulerpa prolifera (Forsskål) Meadow in a Shallow Semi-Enclosed Embayment. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering. 2021; 9 (2):165.
Chicago/Turabian StyleMaria Maidanou; Panayota Koulouri; Paraskevi Karachle; Christos Arvanitidis; Drosos Koutsoubas; Costas Dounas. 2021. "Trophic Diversity of a Fish Community Associated with a Caulerpa prolifera (Forsskål) Meadow in a Shallow Semi-Enclosed Embayment." Journal of Marine Science and Engineering 9, no. 2: 165.
Since recreational diving activities have increased in recent decades, resulting in additional environmental pressure on the coastal zone, the deployment of artificial reefs as a conservation strategy to divert mass ecotourism from fragile natural reefs has been proposed and realized in many areas of the world. Twelve units of a patented naturoid artificial reef technology developed by the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR) were deployed in 2015 in the Underwater Biotechnological Park of Crete (UBPC) in order to create an experimental diving oasis and investigate the potential of achieving this aim for the over-exploited coastal ecosystems of this part of the Eastern Mediterranean. Assessment of the degree of establishment of artificial reefs and their ability to mimic natural ecosystems is often monitored through biological surveys and sampling. The measurement of the chemical, physical, and hydrodynamic characteristics of the water mass surrounding artificial reefs is also essential to fully understand their comparison to natural reefs. In particular, the flow field around reefs has been shown to be one of the most important physical factors in determining suitable conditions for the establishment of a number of key species on reef habitats. However, the combination of biological establishment monitoring and realistic flow-field simulation using computational fluid dynamics as a tool to aid in the design improvement of already existing reef installations has not been fully investigated in previous work. They are often reported separately as either ecological or engineering studies. Therefore, this study examined a full-scale numerical simulation of the field flow around individual already installed naturoid reef shapes, and part of their present arrangement on the sea bottom of the UPBC combined with the field-testing of the functionality of the installed artificial reefs concerning fish species aggregation. The results show that the simulated flow characteristics around the HCMR diving oasis artificial reefs were in good general agreement with the results of former studies, both for flows around a single deployed unit and for flows around a cluster of more than one unit. The results also gave good indications of the performance of individual reef units concerning key desirable characteristics such as downstream shadowing and sediment/nutrient upwelling and resuspension. In particular, they confirmed extended low flow levels (less than 0.3 m/s) and in some cases double vortexes on the downstream side of reef units where observed colonization and habitation of some key fish species had taken place. They also showed how the present distribution of units could be optimized to perform better as an integrated reef cluster. The use of computational fluid dynamics, with field survey data, is therefore suggested as a useful design improvement tool for installed reef structures and their deployment arrangement for recreational diving oases that can aid the sustainable development of the coastal zone.
Dimitrios Androulakis; Costas Dounas; Andrew Banks; Antonios Magoulas; Dionissios Margaris. An Assessment of Computational Fluid Dynamics as a Tool to Aid the Design of the HCMR-Artificial-ReefsTM Diving Oasis in the Underwater Biotechnological Park of Crete. Sustainability 2020, 12, 4847 .
AMA StyleDimitrios Androulakis, Costas Dounas, Andrew Banks, Antonios Magoulas, Dionissios Margaris. An Assessment of Computational Fluid Dynamics as a Tool to Aid the Design of the HCMR-Artificial-ReefsTM Diving Oasis in the Underwater Biotechnological Park of Crete. Sustainability. 2020; 12 (12):4847.
Chicago/Turabian StyleDimitrios Androulakis; Costas Dounas; Andrew Banks; Antonios Magoulas; Dionissios Margaris. 2020. "An Assessment of Computational Fluid Dynamics as a Tool to Aid the Design of the HCMR-Artificial-ReefsTM Diving Oasis in the Underwater Biotechnological Park of Crete." Sustainability 12, no. 12: 4847.
The coastal ocean is one of the most important environments on our planet, home to some of the most bio-diverse and productive ecosystems and providing key input to the livelihood of the majority of human society. It is also a highly dynamic and sensitive environment, particularly susceptible to damage from anthropogenic influences such as pollution and over-exploitation as well as the effects of climate change. These have the added potential to exacerbate other anthropogenic effects and the recent change in sea temperature can be considered as the most pervasive and severe cause of impact in coastal ecosystems worldwide. In addition to open ocean measurements, satellite observations of sea surface temperature (SST) have the potential to provide accurate synoptic coverage of this essential climate variable for the near-shore coastal ocean. However, this potential has not been fully realized, mainly because of a lack of reliable in situ validation data, and the contamination of near-shore measurements by the land. The underwater biotechnological park of Crete (UBPC) has been taking near surface temperature readings autonomously since 2014. Therefore, this study investigated the potential for this infrastructure to be used to validate SST measurements of the near-shore coastal ocean. A comparison between in situ data and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Aqua and Terra SST data is presented for a four year (2014–2018) in situ time series recorded from the UBPC. For matchups between in situ and satellite SST data, only nighttime in situ extrapolated to the sea surface (SSTskin) data within ±1 h from the satellite’s overpass are selected and averaged. A close correlation between the in situ data and the MODIS SST was found (squared Pearson correlation coefficient-r2 > 0.9689, mean absolute error-Δ < 0.51 both for Aqua and Terra products). Moreover, close correlation was found between the satellite data and their adjacent satellite pixel’s data further from the shore (r2 > 0.9945, Δ < 0.23 for both Aqua and Terra products, daytime and nighttime satellite SST). However, there was also a consistent positive systematic difference in the satellite against satellite mean biases indicating a thermal adjacency effect from the land (e.g., mean bias between daytime Aqua satellite SST from the UBPC cell minus the respective adjacent cell’s data is δ = 0.02). Nevertheless, if improvements are made in the in situ sensors and their calibration and uncertainty evaluation, these initial results indicate that near-shore autonomous coastal underwater temperature arrays, such as the one at UBPC, could in the future provide valuable in situ data for the validation of satellite coastal SST measurements.
Dimitrios N. Androulakis; Andrew Clive Banks; Costas Dounas; Dionissios P. Margaris. An Evaluation of Autonomous In Situ Temperature Loggers in a Coastal Region of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea for Use in the Validation of Near-Shore Satellite Sea Surface Temperature Measurements. Remote Sensing 2020, 12, 1140 .
AMA StyleDimitrios N. Androulakis, Andrew Clive Banks, Costas Dounas, Dionissios P. Margaris. An Evaluation of Autonomous In Situ Temperature Loggers in a Coastal Region of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea for Use in the Validation of Near-Shore Satellite Sea Surface Temperature Measurements. Remote Sensing. 2020; 12 (7):1140.
Chicago/Turabian StyleDimitrios N. Androulakis; Andrew Clive Banks; Costas Dounas; Dionissios P. Margaris. 2020. "An Evaluation of Autonomous In Situ Temperature Loggers in a Coastal Region of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea for Use in the Validation of Near-Shore Satellite Sea Surface Temperature Measurements." Remote Sensing 12, no. 7: 1140.
Objectives We report a transcriptome acquisition for the bath sponge Spongia officinalis, a non-model marine organism that hosts rich symbiotic microbial communities. To this end, a pipeline was developed to efficiently separate between bacterial expressed genes from those of eukaryotic origin. The transcriptome was produced to support the assessment of gene expression and, thus, the response of the sponge, to elevated temperatures, replicating conditions currently occurring in its native habitat. Data description We describe the assembled transcriptome along with the bioinformatic pipeline used to discriminate between signals of metazoan and prokaryotic origin. The pipeline involves standard read pre-processing steps and incorporates extra analyses to identify and filter prokaryotic reads out of the analysis. The proposed pipeline can be followed to overcome the technical RNASeq problems characteristic for symbiont-rich metazoan organisms with low or non-existent tissue differentiation, such as sponges and cnidarians. At the same time, it can be valuable towards the development of approaches for parallel transcriptomic studies of symbiotic communities and the host.
Tereza Manousaki; Vasiliki Koutsouveli; Jacques Lagnel; Spyridon Kollias; Costas S. Tsigenopoulos; Christos Arvanitidis; Antonios Magoulas; Costas Dounas; Thanos Dailianis. A de novo transcriptome assembly for the bath sponge Spongia officinalis, adjusting for microsymbionts. BMC Research Notes 2019, 12, 1 -3.
AMA StyleTereza Manousaki, Vasiliki Koutsouveli, Jacques Lagnel, Spyridon Kollias, Costas S. Tsigenopoulos, Christos Arvanitidis, Antonios Magoulas, Costas Dounas, Thanos Dailianis. A de novo transcriptome assembly for the bath sponge Spongia officinalis, adjusting for microsymbionts. BMC Research Notes. 2019; 12 (1):1-3.
Chicago/Turabian StyleTereza Manousaki; Vasiliki Koutsouveli; Jacques Lagnel; Spyridon Kollias; Costas S. Tsigenopoulos; Christos Arvanitidis; Antonios Magoulas; Costas Dounas; Thanos Dailianis. 2019. "A de novo transcriptome assembly for the bath sponge Spongia officinalis, adjusting for microsymbionts." BMC Research Notes 12, no. 1: 1-3.