Cureus | Characteristics of the Mesophotic Megabenthic Assemblages of the Vercelli Seamount (North Tyrrhenian Sea)
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Research Article

Characteristics of the Mesophotic Megabenthic Assemblages of the Vercelli Seamount (North Tyrrhenian Sea)

Marzia Bo, Marco Bertolino, Mireno Borghini, Michela Castellano, Anabella Covazzi Harriague, Cristina Gioia Di Camillo, GianPietro Gasparini, Cristina Misic, Paolo Povero, Antonio Pusceddu, Katrin Schroeder, Giorgio Bavestrello

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DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0016357

License: Bo et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

The biodiversity of the megabenthic assemblages of the mesophotic zone of a Tyrrhenian seamount (Vercelli Seamount) is described using Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) video imaging from 100 m depth to the top of the mount around 61 m depth. This pinnacle hosts a rich coralligenous community characterized by three different assemblages: (i) the top shows a dense covering of the kelp Laminaria rodriguezii; (ii) the southern side biocoenosis is mainly dominated by the octocorals Paramuricea clavata and Eunicella cavolinii; while (iii) the northern side of the seamount assemblage is colonized by active filter-feeding organisms such as sponges (sometimes covering 100% of the surface) with numerous colonies of the ascidian Diazona violacea, and the polychaete Sabella pavonina. This study highlights, also for a Mediterranean seamount, the potential role of an isolated rocky peak penetrating the euphotic zone, to work as an aggregating structure, hosting abundant benthic communities dominated by suspension feeders, whose distribution may vary in accordance to the geomorphology of the area and the different local hydrodynamic conditions.


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Scholarly Impact Quotient™ (SIQ™) is our unique post-publication peer review rating process. SIQ™ assesses article importance and quality by embracing the collective intelligence of the Cureus community-at-large. All registered users are invited to contribute to the SIQ™ of any published article. (Authors cannot rate their own articles.)

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