Posidonia oceanica meadows are declining at alarming rates due to climate change and human activities. Although P. oceanica is considered the most important and well-studied seagrass species of the Mediterranean Sea, to date there has been a limited effort to combine all the spatial information available and provide a complete distribution of meadows across the basin. The aim of this work is to...

The aim of this study is to assess the relevance and the potential of Posidonia oceanica as a tracer of past mercury contamination. Shoots were collected on two sites, an impacted site, Rosignano (Tuscany, Italy), and a pristine site, Tonnara (Corsica, France). Lepidochronology was used to measure mercury concentrations in living sheaths and in the corresponding dead sheaths. The results show t...

For large fishes, seagrass canopies typically provide a relatively flat habitat on seabeds, but seagrasses in the genus Posidonia can provide additional habitat complexity by forming organic-rich deposits known as mats. Erosional processes can scour channels through the mats, resulting in the formation of escarpments with caves. Here we report that reef fishes, such as groupers, inhabit the cav...

The aim of this work was to determine the hydrodynamic dispersion coefficient at different interstitial velocities for its application in a mass transport model to predict heavy metal biosorption onto Posidonia oceanica and peat. Tracing experiments with lithium chloride (LiCl) were performed in biosorbent packed beds of 10 and 27 cm length and flow rates between 10 and 100 cm 3 h −1 . Hydrodyn...

Seagrass meadows are highly productive ecosystems that provide ecosystem services to the coastal zone but are declining globally, particularly due to anthropogenic activities that reduce the quantity of light reaching seagrasses, such as dredging, river discharge and eutrophication. Light quality (the spectral composition of the light) is also altered by these anthropogenic stressors as the dif...

In this study, Posidonia oceanica (L.) Delile (Posidoniaceae), which is a widely distributed phanerogam in Aegean and Mediterranean coasts, was investigated for the phenolic compounds that have the potential to be used in pharmaceutical sciences. The leaves, separated as young and mature leaves, were extracted and analyzed by high-performance liquid chromotagraphy (HPLC). The younger leaves wer...

Very small-sized shoots of the Mediterranean seagrass Posidonia oceanica, defined as “bonsai” shoots, were found in areas with most intense CO2 emissions and low pH associated four vents systems off Panarea island (Aeolian Archipelago, Sicily, Southern Tyrrhenian Sea). Bonsai sampled September 2021 October 2022: Bottaro crater (8 m depth), Camp 7 (16 21 m), Black Point (20 m) Hot/Cold Points (1...

Seagrasses are high plants sharing adaptive metabolic features with both terrestrial plants and marine algae, resulting in a phytocomplex possibly endowed with interesting biological properties. The aim of this study is to evaluate the in vitro activities on skin cells of an ethanolic extract obtained from the leaves of Posidonia oceanica (L.) Delile, family Potamogetonaceae, herein named Posid...

Highly environmentally-friendly fibreboards were manufactured by hot-press moulding using Posidonia ocaeanica wastes and a partially biobased epoxy resin as binder. Fibreboards with a constant fibre content of 70 wt % were successfully manufactured by thermo-compression. The effects of a conventional alkali treatment were compared to the synergistic effects that additional silanization with two...

[1] This paper reports the findings of a 2week field campaign designed to study wave-induced flows within a meadow of Posidonia oceanica at water depth 9m. Previous laboratory experiments suggest that waves induce a mean mass drift in the direction of wave propagation (“streaming”) through submerged canopies of vegetation. This paper provides the first field measurements of this wave-induced st...