Alice Rotini - FedOA - Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II

ABSTRACT
Posidonia oceanica (L.) Delile is the dominant endemic seagrass in the
Mediterranean Sea, where it forms highly productive meadows. Worldwide seagrass
monitoring is an issue of increasing interest in research, management and policies,
due to the ecological role of these ecosystems, their global decline and their
ecological indicator characteristics. The choice and combination of measurable,
sensitive and integrative descriptors that adequately reflect the environmental
alterations is a challenge for the whole scientific community.
This work has been devoted to the identification and development of
different generation of "diagnostic" tools to be used in monitoring of the seagrass
meadows conservation status. These tools are based on biochemical and molecular
approaches that can provide early and reliable information on the ecophysiological
status of plants (e.g. phenol determination, proteomics, RAPD genetic analysis,
oxidative stress markers, etc.)
Results provide evidences of their convenient application as markers of the
health status of P. oceanica and/or other seagrass meadows; some of them are early-
warning indicators of plant stress responses. Furthermore, the proposed tools are
standardizable, provide detailed information about physiological status of the plants
and can be integrated to the traditional methods of investigation.
The approach proposed by this research project makes available several tools
to establish the linkage between stressor and seagrass response and to better
understand the effects of complex disturbances.
This PhD thesis is part of a research project developed in the Ecotoxicology
laboratory at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”