Applied Ecology - Dottorato in Biologia Evoluzionistica ed Ecologia

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Analysis of the effects of environmental conditions on development, physiological state and behaviour of Teleost fish (Stefano Cataudella, Clara Boglione)
Analysis of the pattern of exploitation of life resources in the Mediterranean from the italian commercial fishing fleet by means of Vessel Monitoring System by Satellite: trends, bioeconomical models and spatial statistics. (Stefano Cataudella, Tommaso Russo)

Food safety

Multidisciplinary evaluation of overall quality of aquatic animal production; setting up of morpho-eco-physiological indicators of products and quality processes aimed at building regulatory models for aquaculture full chain and for environmental quality. Innovative applications to system control of fishery chain: use of immagine analysis for freshness evaluation or for controlling illegal under-size fishes in market boxes. (Stefano Cataudella, Clara Boglione)
Image analysis method for automatic cyanobacterial recognition in drinking water; early warning, sensor-based, techniques for phycotoxin detection in fish and mussels. (Roberta Congestri)

Microbial Ecology and Ecotoxicology
Effects of increased CO₂:

Changes in the microbial communities associated with seagrass in experimental conditions (mesocosms) and in naturally acidified sea water; analysis of biochemical markers in plants exposed to sea water acidification. Analysis of the increasing incidence of Vibrionaceae in the Mediterranean, as the consequence of the water-temperature rising which, in turn, is linked to the CO₂ increase and the global warming effect. Molecular identification methods to identify environmental species, including those pathogenic for ‘humans and/or marine animals. (Luciana Migliore, Maria Cristina Thaller)

Ecotoxicity of Nanomaterials

Development of new ecotoxicological tests and adaptation of already standardized assays for the evaluation of the effects of nanoparticles in freshwater, marine and brackish ecosystems. In particular, a new, rapid and inexpensive test on Vibrio anguillarum has been developed as a model system for the evaluation of the ecotoxicity of metal nanomaterials in marine and brackish ecosystems, where salinity modify the physical state of nanoparticles. Furthermore, other standardized tests on other organisms belonging to other trophic levels (i.e. producer, consumers) have been modifyed, to cope with the needs of nanomaterial evaluation. In accordance with OECD indications, all these assays include the assessment of the physical state and the aggregation of nanomaterials to the different test conditions (i.e. salinity). For this reason the essays include the evaluations by Analytical Centrifugation (Lumisizer ®) and Dynamic light scattering (DLS), to state the relationships between ecotoxicity and physical state of the material in each test (Luciana Migliore). The same tests were utilized to evaluate the effects of microplastics. (Luciana Migliore)