The Benthic Macroalgae of Riviera Del Conero

Algae are a heterogeneous group of organisms which play an important role in our world today and have been doing so for a long time. Algae are often harvested for biofuel, for the extraction of industrially useful products and for food sources for aquaculture and humans. They have also generated a large fraction of the oxygen present in our atmosphere today. Algae contribute in major ways to global biodiversity as they are connected with many other organisms in food webs, biogeochemical cycles as well as in symbiotic associations. They are a group of organisms that include both photosynthetic eukaryotic protists and the prokaryotic cyanobacteria. Algae can be classified based on their size as microalgae and macroalgae, however as algae belong to diverse evolutionary lineages they are commonly defined by their ecological traits.

During my professional practice my main task was to contribute to the sampling and identification of the macroalgal groups Rhodophyta (red algae), Phaeophyceae (brown algae) and the Chlorophyta (green algae) in La Riviera Del Conero, Marche, Italy. This is something that my supervisor Dr. Fabio Rindi has been doing for the past 10 years. By monitoring the algae over such a long timespan you can easily see which species are becoming more common, which are becoming more rare and whether new species are introduced in the region.