Abstract
Having a reliable ecological reference baseline is pivotal to understanding the current status of benthic assemblages. Ecological awareness of our perception of environmental changes could be better described based on historical data. Otherwise, we meet with the shifting baseline syndrome (SBS). Facing SBS harmful consequences on environmental and cultural heritage, as well as on conservation strategies, requires combining historical data with contemporary biomonitoring. In the present “era of biodiversity”, we advocate for (1) the crucial role of taxonomy as a study of life diversity and (2) the robust, informative value of museum collections as memories of past ecosystem conditions. This scenario requires taxonomist skills to understand community composition and diversity, as well as to determine ecosystem change trends and rates. In this paper, we focus on six Mediterranean benthic habitats to track biological and structural changes that have occurred in the last few decades. We highlight the perception of biological changes when historical records make possible effective comparisons between past reference situations and current data. We conclude that the better we know the past, the more we understand present (and will understand future) ecosystem functioning. Achieving this goal is intrinsically linked to investing in training new taxonomists who are able to assure intergeneration connectivity to transmit cultural and environmental heritage, a key aspect to understanding and managing our changing ecosystems.
Highlights
Introduction of Ruditapes philippinarumThe human-mediated changes caused by the Manila clam Ruditapes philippinarum
The Mediterranean endemic seagrass Posidonia oceanica (Linnaeus) Delile, 1813 is characterized by its high leaf shoots thriving in the water column and its matte setting on the seabed
Geodia cydonium (Linnaeus, 1767; Figure 4), an Atlantic–Mediterranean sponge commonly living in sheltered coastal waters, thrived as a dense population in the bay, composed of specimens that were variable in dimensions, reaching up to 40–100 cm in diameter [52,53,54]
Summary
Πάντα ῥεῖ, (panta rei), the well-known Heraclitus aphorism, admirably highlights change as the manifold aspect of Nature. Environmental space and time changes continuously occur, trigging variations in organism assemblages, whose description is the major goal of ecology. Ecosystem dynamics have been the favorite topic among marine ecologists, including succession, persistence, and evolution, and the Mediterranean benthic communities have not been an exception (e.g., [1,2,3]). Such an interest is according to its relevance in resource partitioning processes. The manifold aspects of marine ecosystem modifications have been largely discussed, including the distinction between fluctuations and the role of episodic events in coastal community variations (see, e.g., [5,6]). This, in turn, could be basal for preserving the knowledge required to understand changes in the benthic communities over time, as well as to allow the new generations of ecologists to avoid SBS
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