In the central Mediterranean Sea, gut contents and feces of 95 turtles captured by bottom trawlers and pelagic longliners fishing in neritic and oceanic areas, respectively, were examined. Benthic prey were more abundant than pelagic, a probable bias due to the higher digestibility of the latter. Animal and plant taxa belonging to 12 Phyla and 20 Classes were observed, with 63 new records of prey species, and Malacostraca, Gastropoda, and Echinoidea were the most commonly occurring animal classes. Results showed a highly opportunistic foraging behavior by the turtles on both live and dead material in the epipelagic zone as well as on all types of seafloor. Benthic taxa were found in turtles as small as 26 cm curved carapace length (CCL), indicating an early use of benthic resources, and also among turtles over a wide size range caught by pelagic longliners. The lack of evidence of a strict oceanic/pelagic stage and of a clear habitat shift in the observed size range (25 to 80.3 cm CCL), when considered together with other recent findings, challenges the current ontogenetic model of life history for the species. A relaxed model is proposed, with an early short obligate epipelagic stage due to limited diving capacity, followed by the main opportunistic amphi-habitat stage, with a tendency to prefer benthic prey as turtles grow and their benthic foraging efficiency improves. Under this model, temporary or permanent association or fidelity to specific oceanic or neritic zones would vary among individuals or populations according to food availability and oceanographic features in the foraging or migratory areas. © Inter-Research 2008

The mollusc fauna of the Mediterranean Sea is still considered as the best-known marine mollusc fauna in the world. The previous modern checklists of marine Mollusca were produced by joint teams of amateurs and professionals. During the last years the Italian Society of Malacology (Società Italiana di Malacologia – S.I.M.) maintained an updated version of the Mediterranean checklist, that served as the backbone for the development of the new Italian checklist. According to the current version (updated on April 1st, 2021), 1,777 recognised species of marine molluscs are present in the Italian Economic Exclusive Zone, including also the Tyrrhenian coasts of Corsica and the continental shelf of the Maltese archipelago. The new checklist shows an increase of 17% of the species reported in the 1995 Checklist. This is largely (yet not solely) due to the new wave of studies based on Integrative Taxonomy approaches. A total of 135 species (7.6%) are strictly endemic to the Italian waters; 44 species (2.5%) are alien and correspond to the 28% of the Mediterranean alien marine molluscs. All eight extant molluscan classes are represented. The families represented in the Italian fauna are 307, an increase of 14.6% from the first checklist, partly due to new records and partly to new phylogenetic systematics. Compared with the whole Mediterranean mal-acofauna, the Italian component represents 71% in species and 61% in families, which makes it a very remarkable part of the Mediterranean fauna.