Acronym: UNDER-PRESSURE
Keywords: #EnvironmentalBiology, #MarineBiology, #Biodiversity, #ClimateChange, #Overfishing, #Ecophysiology, #PopulationDynamics
Coordinator/Lead Partner: Università degli Studi di Genova, Italy
Principal Investigator(s): Simone Farina
Partnership: Unige, CNR, SZN
Funding body and amount: MUR, Progetti di Ricerca di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale (PRIN)
Overall funding: 205.962,47 €
Funding to GMC-SZN: 58.683,55 €
Grant period: October 2023 – November 2025
Project in a nutshell:
Human-driven environmental pressures may exert a crucial role in sea urchin population dynamics, influencing their structure, fitness, behaviour and distribution. The aim of UNDER-PRESSURE is to investigate the causes of the regression of P. lividus populations observed in Liguria and Sardinia characterized by different human-driven environmental stressors: climate change and overfishing respectively. Sea urchin early life stages seem to be particularly sensitive to extreme thermal stress in surface water that have also exacerbated the phenomenon of Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) in Liguria. Whilst, the chronic loss of the largest and oldest individuals in Sardinia, compromising the population self-sustenance and the population body-size rescaling may affect physiological and behavioral traits by increasing the reproductive investment of younger and smaller individuals, possibly determining the exacerbation of grazing on macroalgae, with cascading consequences on coastal ecosystems.
Contacts: simone.farina(at)szn.it
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