It is a well-known fact that diseases affect health, survival and recruitment of any individual susceptible for diseases. As a consequence of disease, harvests from natural resources and, in particular, those from aquaculture dwindle quite severely. While an appreciable volume of information on variety of mycotic diseases in the marine organisms is available on global scale, studies from Indian...

Increasing global temperatures are having a profound impact in the Arctic, including the dramatic loss of multiyear sea ice in 2007 that has continued to the present. The majority of life in the Arctic is microbial and the consequences of climate-mediated changes on microbial marine food webs, which are responsible for biogeochemical cycling and support higher trophic levels, are unknown. We ex...

The global economy is currently experiencing one of its biggest contractions on record. A sharp decline in global imports and exports since 2008 has affected global merchant vessel traffic, the principal mode of bulk commodity transport around the world. During the first quarter of 2009, 10% and 25% of global container and refrigerated vessels, respectively, were reported to be unemployed. A la...

Chemical cues constitute much of the language of life in the sea. Our understanding of biotic interactions and their effects on marine ecosystems will advance more rapidly if this language is studied and understood. Here, I review how chemical cues regulate critical aspects of the behavior of marine organisms from bacteria to phytoplankton to benthic invertebrates and water column fishes. These...

Bioluminescence (light production) and fluorescence (re-emission of absorbed radiation as light) are found in an unaccountably diverse array of marine organisms, where their functions are largely unknown. Here we report a deep-sea siphonophore that twitches glowing lures to attract fish. This is rare evidence of bioluminescence used for prey attraction among nonvisual marine organisms. The lure...

The pelagic larvae of many marine organisms can potentially disperse across hundreds of kilometers, but whether oceanographic or behavioral mechanisms can constrain dispersal over periods sufficient for the evolution of genetic differentiation remains unclear. Here, we concurrently examine larval duration and genetic population differentiation in a cleaner goby, Elacatinus evelynae, a member of...

Marine organisms can be used to produce several novel products that have applications in new medical technologies, in food and feed ingredients and as biofuels. In this paper two examples are described: the development of marine drugs from sponges and the use of microalgae to produce bulk chemicals and biofuels. Many sponges produce bioactive compounds with important potential applications as m...

The TRIX index used for the assessment of trophic status of coastal waters has been applied in many European seas (Adriatic, Tyrrhenian, Baltic, Black Sea, and North Sea). However, all these waters are characterized by high nutrient levels and phytoplankton biomass; index calibration based on systems that are principally eutrophic may introduce bias to the index scaling. In the present work the...

Upper Turonian–Santonian limestones at three island locations (Ist, Silba and Premuda) in the southwestern part of the Adriatic carbonate platform, record slope deposition based on their sedimentological and palaeontological characteristics. These Upper Cretaceous successions consist of three vertically superimposed lithotypes: (1) pelagic mudstonespackstones, (2) laminated pelagic wackestones-...

The dispersal of larvae and their settlement to suitable habitat is fundamental to the replenishment of marine populations and the communities in which they live. Sound plays an important role in this process because for larvae of various species, it acts as an orientational cue towards suitable settlement habitat. Because marine sounds are largely of biological origin, they not only carry info...