“Rejuvenescence Process” in esemplari fossili di Cladocora caespitosa (Linneo, 1767): una strategia adattativa per contrastare il cambiamento climatico?

Abstract

Cladocora caespitosa is an endemic coral of the Mediterranean Sea. Although C. caespitosa is well adapted to the marked seasonality of the basin, the increasing and frequent heat-waves due to climate change are challenging its survival. Peculiar skeletal structures, found both in fossil and in living colonies, would suggest the existence of a particular adaptive process, namely the rejuvenescence process. This survival mechanism could contribute to better understand the resilience of C. caespitosa, which lived in the Mediterranean Sea since the Upper Pliocene, a period warmer than the current one. Fossil colonies of C. caespitosa attributed to the Last Interglacial Period (LIG), were found in the area of Taranto. Some of these fossil specimens showed a peculiar skeletal typical of the “rejuvenescence process”. This adaptative process could be used as a marker of the thermal stress in C. caespitosa, highlighting the differences between the present and the past climatic oscillations.