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A biomonitoring approach based on a single model species cannot be representative of the contaminations impacts on the ecosystem overall. As part of the Interreg DIADeM program (“Development of an integrated approach for the diagnosis of the water quality of the River Meuse”), a study was conducted to establish the proof of concept that the use of a multispecies active biomonitoring approach improves diagnostic of aquatic systems. The complementarity of the biomarker responses was tested in four model species belonging to various ecological compartments: the bryophyte Fontinalis antipyretica, the bivalve Dreissena polymorpha, the amphipod Gammarus fossarum and the fish Gasterosteus aculeatus. The species have been caged upstream and downstream from five wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in the Meuse watershed. After the exposure, a battery of biomarkers was measured and results were compiled in an Integrated Biomarker Response (IBR) for each species. A multispecies IBR value was then proposed to assess the quality of the receiving environment upstream the WWTPs. The effluent toxicity was variable according to the caged species and the WWTP. However, the calculated IBR were high for all species and upstream sites, suggesting that the water quality was already downgraded upstream the WWTP. This contamination of the receiving environment was confirmed by the multispecies IBR which has allowed to rank the rivers from the less to the most contaminated. This study has demonstrated the interest of the IBR in the assessment of biological impacts of a point-source contamination (WWTP effluent) but also of the receiving environment, thanks to the use of independent references. Moreover, this study has highlighted the complementarity between the different species and has emphasized the interest of this multispecies approach to consider the variability of the species exposition pathway and sensibility as well as the mechanism of contaminants toxicity in the final diagnosis. DIADEM

Fish development and acclimation to environmental conditions are strongly mediated by the hormonal endocrine system. In environments contaminated by anthropogenic stressors, hormonal pathway alterations can be detrimental for growth, survival, fitness, and at a larger scale for population maintenance. In the context of increasingly contaminated marine environments worldwide, numerous laboratory studies have confirmed the effect of one or a combination of pollutants on fish hormonal systems. However, this has not been confirmed in situ. In this review, we explore the body of knowledge related to the influence of anthropogenic stressors disrupting fish endocrine systems, recent advances (focusing on thyroid hormones and stress hormones such as cortisol), and potential research perspectives. Through this review, we highlight how harbours can be used as "in situ laboratories" given the variety of anthropogenic stressors (such as plastic, chemical, sound, light pollution, and invasive species) that can be simultaneously investigated in harbours over long periods of time.

The extraction of volatiles from perishable food at a sub-ambient temperature using headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) has not been considered in the past due to the corresponding loss in sensitivity. We propose HS-SPME sampling under vacuum (Vac-HS-SPME) to compensate problems of sensitivity loss and achieve substantial improvement in extraction efficiencies whilst sampling at temperatures as low as 5 °C. The approach was applied to fish samples, representing a highly vulnerable perishable food sample. The theoretical considerations explaining the performance of Vac-HS-SPME at sub-ambient temperatures are discussed and related to the increase in gas diffusivities when sampling under vacuum. A comparative study between Vac- and regular HS-SPME for the extraction of 18 compounds from salmon was carried out at different temperatures (5, 30 and 40 °C) and sampling times (10-60 min). For the majority of the compounds, Vac-HS-SPME at 5 °C yielded similar or superior extraction efficiencies than regular HS-SPME even when sampling at 40 °C. However, four compounds were better extracted at 1 atm presumably due to the intensification of competitive adsorption of analytes on the SPME fiber under vacuum or the partial losses of more volatile analytes during air-evacuation in the presence of the frozen samples. Sub-ambient temperature sampling (5 °C) combined with Vac-HS-SPME was also applied to monitor the changes in the 18 compounds present in salmon, redfish, and cod refrigerated for up to five days. The results were compared to those obtained with regular HS-SPME at 40 °C. Overall, Vac-HS-SPME sampling at 5 °C represents a new and powerful approach for the analysis of volatiles in refrigerated foods, and has a great potential for future studies in quality control and freshness assessment.

Spatio‐temporal variability of marine soundscapes reflects environmental dynamics and local habitat health. This study characterizes the coastal soundscape of the Cres‐Lošinj Natura 2000 Site of Community Importance, encompassing the non‐tourist (11–15 March 2020) and the tourist (26–30 July 2020) season. A total of 240 h of continuous recordings were manually analyzed and the abundance of animal vocalizations and boat noise was obtained; sound pressure levels were calculated for the low (63–2000 Hz) and high (2000–20,000 Hz) frequency range. Two fish sound types were drivers of both seasonal and diel variability of the low‐frequency soundscape. The first is emitted by the cryptic Roche’s snake blenny (Ophidion rochei), while the second, whose emitter remains unknown, was previously only described in canyons and coralligenous habitats of the Western Mediterranean Sea. The high‐frequency bands were characterized by bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) vocalizations, indicating dolphins’ use of area for various purposes. Boat noise, however, dominated the local soundscape along the whole considered periods and higher sound pressure levels were found during the Tourist season. Human‐generated noise pollution, which has been previously found 10 years ago, is still present in the area and this urges management actions. Interreg Italy-Croatia CBC Programme

This article critically reviews the current state of knowledge on the quality of animal-source foods according to animal production and food processing conditions, including consumer expectations-behaviours and the effects of consumption of animal-source foods on human health. Quality has been defined through seven core attributes: safety, commercial, sensory, nutritional, technological, convenience, and image. Image covers ethical, cultural and environmental dimensions associated with the origin of the food and the way it is produced and processed. This framework enabled to highlight the priorities given to the different quality attributes. It also helped to identify potential antagonisms and synergies among quality attributes, between production and processing stages, and among stakeholders. Primacy is essentially given to commercial quality attributes, especially for standard commodity animal-source foods. This primacy has strongly influenced genetic selection and farming practices in all livestock commodity chains and enabled substantial quantitative gains, although at the expense of other quality traits. Focal issues are the destructuration of chicken muscle that compromises sensory, nutritional and image quality attributes, and the fate of males in the egg and dairy sectors, which have heavily specialised their animals. Quality can be gained but can also be lost throughout the farm-to-fork continuum. Our review highlights critical factors and periods throughout animal production and food processing routes, such as on-farm practices, notably animal feeding, preslaughter and slaughter phases, food processing techniques, and food formulation. It also reveals on-farm and processing factors that create antagonisms among quality attributes, such as the castration of male pigs, the substitution of marine-source feed by plant-based feed in fish, and the use of sodium nitrite in meat processing. These antagonisms require scientific data to identify trade-offs among quality attributes and/or solutions to help overcome these tensions. However, there are also food products that value synergies between quality attributes and between production and processing phases, particularly Geographical Indications, such as for cheese and dry-cured ham. Human epidemiological studies have found associations between consumption of animal-source foods and increased or decreased risk for chronic non-communicable diseases. These associations have informed public health recommendations. However, they have not yet considered animal production and food processing conditions. A concerted and collaborative effort is needed from scientists working in animal science, food process engineering, consumer science, human nutrition and epidemiology in order to address this research gap. Avenues for research and main options for policy action are discussed.

Time and energy are finite resources in any environment, and how and when organisms use their available resources to survive and reproduce is the crux of life history theory (Gadgil and Bossert 1970; Balon 1975; Stearns 1976). The different survival strategies used by animals are often shaped by their environment in addition to their biology (Winemiller and Rose 1992), which allows for exploration into biological variability when environmental factors are known. For this reason, the Line Islands in the Central Pacific provide an ideal location to perform observational studies due to their unique productivity gradient and fish assemblage structures across the island chain (Sandin et al. 2008; DeMartini et al. 2008; Fox et al. 2018; Zgliczynski et al. 2019). Many of the world’s coral reefs are in remote regions that lack monitoring programs or even local populations, so conducting ecological surveys on fish communities in these regions can require extensive amounts of time, energy, resources and people. The inherent variability an environment exerts on the many factors that contribute to growth over a lifetime make it difficult to generate a directly proportional formula that calculates age. A novel age estimation method was developed that utilizes in-situ visual census data to estimate the age of fishes, and as a case study, several fish were chosen as representative species to explore its capabilities. Through this process, new ecological information and insight can be gained about the age structures of fish populations both between and throughout the Line Islands.

We present high-resolution measurements of CO mixing ratios from ice cores drilled at five different sites on the Greenland ice sheet. An optical-feedback cavity-enhanced absorption spectrometer (OF-CEAS) was coupled with continuous melter systems and operated during four analytical campaigns conducted between 2013 and 2019 at the Desert Research Institute (DRI, USA) and the Institut des Géoscience de l'Environnement (IGE, France). The CFA-based CO measurements exhibit excellent external precision (ranging from 3.3 to 6.6 ppbv, 1 sigma) and achieve consistently low blanks (ranging from 4.1 +/- 1.2 to 12.6 +/- 4.4 ppbv), enabling paleoatmospheric interpretations. Consistent baseline CO records from four Greenlandic sites (PLACE, D4, NGRIP, and NEEM) are combined to produce a multisite average ice core reconstruction of past atmospheric CO for the Northern Hemisphere high latitudes, covering the period from 1700 to 1957 CE. Such a reconstruction should be taken as an upper bound of past atmospheric CO abundance.

Fishes use sounds to communicate in different behavioural contexts such as courtship, reproduction, defence and aggressive behaviours. This ability is found in several unrelated taxa highlighting its significance in life. Among them, Holocentridae are vocal reef fishes found worldwide and in abundance. Since they are nocturnal, being able to produce sounds to communicate is essential. However, sounds of only few species of this family have been studied so far. Similarly, the morphology of their sound-producing apparatus has been investigated. Because morphological differences have been found between genera, differences in terms of sound features are expected too. The aim of this study is dual. We first want to compare sounds of different species recorded in the same behavioural context to determine if sounds are species-specific. Second, we also want to seek whether sounds of species from the same genus show more common acoustical features in comparison with species from other genera. Different temporal (sound duration, pulse period, number of pulses, etc.) and frequential features were used for comparisons between species and genera. Results strongly support that sounds are species-specific since Discriminant Analysis allowed to relocate their sounds to the different species. It also appears that sounds can testify the belonging to a given genus.

A bulk composite carbonate stable isotope, X-ray fluorescence (XRF) scanning (elemental barium), biogenic barium and benthic foraminiferal record in deep sea sediments from the tropical Pacific was produced from 71.5 to 66 million years ago to determine variations in carbon export in the Pacific during the Maastrichtian. The cores were drilled on Shatsky Rise in the tropical Pacific at Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Leg 198 Sites 1209 and 1210 whose current locations are 32°39.1081′N, 158°30.3564′E (2387 m below sea level) and 32°13.420′N, 158°15.5623′E (2573 m below sea level), respectively (Bralower et al., 2002). Bulk carbonate δ18O and δ13C were measured in 1394 samples from both Sites 1209 (1096) and 1210 (298) about every 5 cm at MARUM, University Bremen. Bulk carbonate analyses were carried out on a Finnigan MAT 251 mass spectrometer equipped with automated carbonate preparation line (Kiel III) and reported relative to the Vienna Pee Dee Belemnite (VPDB) international standard, determined via adjustment to calibrated in-house standards and NBS-19. Non-destructive XRF data were collected every 2 cm down-core using XRF core scanner Avaatech serial no. 17 from the XRF core scanning facility at the IODP Gulf Coast Repository at Texas A&M University (College Station, USA). Data were collected over a 1.2 cm² area with a down-core slit size of 10 mm using generator settings of 50 kV and a current of 0.75 mA, ideally for detecting Ba, and a sampling time of 12 s in each run directly at the split core surface of the archive half. Discrete samples from 5 intervals that consist of 51 samples in total were processed to determine the marine barite content using a barite separation process modified from Paytan et al. (1996) and excess-Ba (bio-Ba) by measuring the digested bulk sample on a Perkin Elmer 3000DV ICP-OES and using equation from Dymond et al. (1992). Additional samples for benthic foraminifera were taken from over 2 of the 5 intervals that have barite data. Benthic foraminiferal quantitative analysis was carried out at University of Zaragoza based on representative splits of approximately 300 specimens larger than 63 µm.

Understanding fish diversity patterns is critical for fisheries management amidst overfishing and climate change. Fish egg surveys have been used to characterize pelagic spawning fish communities, estimate biomass, and track population trends in response to perturbations. Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding has been implemented to rapidly and non-invasively survey marine ecosystems. To understand the efficacy of eDNA metabarcoding for assessing pelagic spawning fish community composition, concurrent eDNA metabarcoding and fish egg DNA barcoding off Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Pier (La Jolla, CA) were conducted. Both methods revealed seasonal patterns in agreement with previous fish and fish egg surveys. Species richness was highest in late spring and summer. The presence and spawning of commercially important species and species of conservation concern were detected. Both methods showed overlap for pelagic spawning fishes for broadcast spawners, schooling fish, and locally abundant species. Some actively spawning species were not co-detected with eDNA, likely due to different sampling strategies, taxonomic biases, and abiotic/biotic factors influencing eDNA transport, shedding, and degradation. We identified key advantages and disadvantages of each method. Fish egg barcoding provided information on spawning trends but did not detect taxa with alternate reproduction strategies. Metabarcoding eDNA detected species not found in fish egg sampling, including demersal and viviparous bony fishes, non-spawning adults, Chondrichthyan, and Mammalian species, but missed abundant pelagic fish eggs. This study demonstrates that DNA barcoding of fish eggs and eDNA metabarcoding work best in tandem as each method identified unique fish taxa and provided complementary ecological and biological insight.