Genetica, ecologia e comportamento di un biomonitore della variabilità di sistemi acquatici di transizione

Transitional waters play a key role in the functioning of marine ecosystems. In the Italian coastal areas there is only one killifish, Aphanius fasciatus (Valenciennes, 1821), which spents its entire life cycle in these habitats. This project explored the possibility of using Aphanius fasciatus as "biomonitor" of environmental variability to which salt marsh systems within the Venice lagoon are subjected, investigating the adaptive responses of the species to environmental pressures at the level of genetic structure, demography, life history traits and behaviour, articulating the analysis on different spatial scales. While there were no significant differences in the genetic structure of the populations at lagoon scale, the species showed a high phenotypic plasticity. In fact, populations differ in demographic parameters, morphometry and in variations of life history traits related to reproductive investment as a response of the species to different environmental pressures and to the structure of the habitat.