Abstract

Climate change is affecting marine environments all over the world but scientists' attention is mainly devoted to tropical areas. In the Mediterranean Sea, species with a cold affinity are decreasing very fast from 0 to 40 m depth, while warm water species increase. From 2000, several populations of the zoanthid Parazoanthus axinellae (Schmidt 1882) have been showing signs of suffering along the Ligurian coast. Here we report a three‐year monitoring, from June 2001 to September 2003, of a population of P. axinellae on the rocky cliff of the Portofino Promontory (Ligurian Sea). During this span of time the population, which covered an area of several square metres with a density of about 1 polyp cm−2, was severely reduced. In the meanwhile an encrusting sponge, Crambe crambe, rapidly colonized the free substrates abandoned by the zoanthid. Warm water and the massive proliferation of a cyanobacterium attributed to the genus Porphyrosiphon are hypothesized to be the main causes of this disease.

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