Abstract
The caves have a significant economic importance in their role as tourist attraction and are of great importance for the presence of some rare species. The fauna identification in the “Grotta del Maresciallo” cave, situated in the Riviera di Ulisse Regional Park, started in march 2013 by a visual census and molecular approach. The studies allowed to detect 12 classes, 46 families, 47 species with their ecological niches, and the percentage contribution of each group to the Mediterranean marine cave diversity. Furthermore, we report the presence of two thermophilic species, as the star coral, Astroides calycularis (Pallas, 1766) and the goldblotch grouper, Epinephelus costae (Steindachner, 1878); the tropical species, the ringneck blenny Parablennius pilicornis (Cuvier, 1829); the endangered species, the dusky grouper Epinephelus marginatus (Lowe, 1834) included in the IUCN Red List; the rare species, the black brotula Grammonus ater (Risso, 1810), and some uncommon species such as the golden coral shrimp, Stenopus spinosus (Risso, 1826) and the spotted bumblebee shrimp, Gnatophillum elegans (Risso, 1816). Species of economic and medical interest were also recorded. In a DNA barcoding approach, Neighbour Joining (NJ) phylogenetic tree of 25 mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit I species sequences, indicates that COI gene is suitable for an unambiguous identification. This first geological and biological attempt at the Marine Area of the “Grotta del Maresciallo” provides useful indications to focus future investigations, and may become a potential management tool for local administrations to protect these habitats.
Highlights
The marine areas in a Park are geographically individuated and defined, legally protected due to their environmental, cultural and economic value [1]
The newest EU political actions regarding maritime strategic objectives, such as the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), and the European Strategy for Marine and Maritime Research [18], represent a push to draw up an inventory of the alien species in the Mediterranean sea
Abundance of species and taxa Mediterranean biodiversity percentage: Common name of fish species in the entrance and inside the “Grotta del Maresciallo”, their distribution as the site physical conditions detected are reported in Tab
Summary
The marine areas in a Park are geographically individuated and defined, legally protected due to their environmental, cultural and economic value [1]. Still there can be a biological pollution due to new thermophilic and/or tropical species [5,6,7] For these reasons a continuous monitoring action is necessary to provide information about the costal structure, sea level changes, spatio-temporal species in the caves performed by a census made and supported by professional divers and molecular techniques [8,9,10,11,12]. In this optic the census and the identification represent an important step to establish the abundance/rarity degree of the marinea species [13,14], as well to detect possibly cryptic species and even to describe new species [15,16,17].
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