The National Interuniversity Consortium for Marine Sciences CoNISMa (www.conisma.it) comprises 32 Italian Universities, including about  700 researchers and technicians, it has a recognized legal status and it is under the surveillance of the Ministry of University and Research. CoNISMa recently entered in the EU Marine Board, being a unique super-organism in Europe, since it merges scientific and capacity building activities. Through CoNISMa, the Italian University-based research and capacity building system working on marine sciences became a single entity and  reached international size and reputation as such. CoNISMa covers all  fields of marine sciences, with both research and capacity building  activities ranging from physics to chemistry, geology, biology, ecology, engineering, economics, and legal sciences. It carries out  its activities worldwide including the W and E Mediterranean, Atlantic, Pacific, Antarctic Ocean and Sub-Antarctic regions. The  administrative offices are located in Rome, but the bulk of the "staff" and "infrastructures" is in the associated Universities. In  the last 15 years, CoNISMa has participated in more than 40 UE research projects as coordinator or partner (SYNDEM, HAKE, EUROROCK,  MEDLAND, CODEPASS, GENHAKE, MECO, SAP, EMMA, DESEAS, ADIOS, INTEREPOL, BIODEEP, NOMIRACLE, CORALZOO, EPICA, EUROCEANS, HERMES, BIOTOX, ALARM, SYNDEM, MARBEF, MERSEA, REEFRES, JASON, SESAME, MEDSEA, VECTORS, TENDERMARE, PERSEUS,DEVOTES, COCONET, MED-JELLIRISK,etc.).

Description of Personnel Involved in the Project

Simonetta Fraschetti

Associate Professor in Ecology at the University of Salento – CoNISMa (Italy). She combines field descriptive research, manipulative experiments and spatial analysis techniques with the aim of gaining a better understanding of the pattern of distribution of marine biodiversity and of the processes shaping marine communities, especially in subtidal and intertidal rocky habitats. She is collaborator or coordinator of several national and international projects for implementing the conservation and the management of marine costal systems. A specific focus of her research is on setting priorities through conservation planning tools for the identification of network of Marine Protected Areas in the Mediterranean Sea. The quantification of changes in coastal marine communities under the effects of multiple stressors to inform marine spatial planning and the study of the recovery of disturbed assemblages are also relevant aspects of her research. Author of 60 scientific articles on ISI journals and 12 international scientific books.
She is also lecturer to graduate students in Fundamental Ecology and Climate Change at the University of Salento. Member of the Jury Margalef Prize invited by the Generalitat de Catalunya Departament de la Presidència, Secretat General, Member of the European Network of Excellence Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning (MARBEF) of the European Union, presently Administrative Treasurer of the Italian Ecological Society, Member of the Directive Conseil of the Italian Association of Oceanography and Limnology (2007-2011), Member of the Italian Society of Marine Biology and of the Italian Zoological Union. Member of the Mediterranean Group of IUCN's World Commission on Protected Areas - Marine (WCPA MMED). Consultant for the Brindisi (Apulia) Province in the Technical Committee for Environmental Impact Assessment (2008-2010). Consultant of Twinning Project MT04-IB-EN-02 for implementing the Habitat Directive. Tutor of five graduate students, one Post hoc, five undergraduate students.

Michele Scardi

University Tor Vergata, Biology degree at the University of Naples. He has been researcher at Stazione Zoologica “A. Dohrn” of Naples at the Biological Oceanography Laboratory, for about ten years. He has been assistant professor at the Universities of Sassari (Sardinia, Italy) and Palermo (Sicily, Italy). Since November 1998 he is Associate Professor of Ecology, at first at the University of Bari (Italy) and then, since November 2001, at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”. He held several short courses and lectures on Numerical Ecology and Machine Learning application to Ecology in Universities and private Institutions both in Italy and abroad. He is a founder member of the International Society for Ecological Informatics and organized the 3rd Conference of the Society. He is the author of more than 200 scientific papers, book chapters and oral presentations. He is a member of the editorial board of Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group), Freshwater Biology (Wiley) and Ecological Informatics (Elsevier) and has been guest editor for Ecological Modelling. From 2007 to 2010 he has been a member of the Italian National Scientific Committee for Antarctica. His present research activities in the framework of national and international programmes include applications of neural networks and other machine learning techniques as empirical models of ecological processes, regional and global phytoplankton primary production models, assessment of ecosystem status and development and application of data analysis techniques in ecology, zoology and oceanography. He provides technical as well as scientific assistance to Italian Ministries and to other Institutions (e.g. he has been appointed as expert for the implementation of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive by the Ministry of the Environment).

Giuseppe Guarnieri

Postdoc position since 2006 at the University of Salento where he collaborated, with different institutions in numerous national and international research projects (such as Interreg, European Framework Programs, PRIN) regarding the monitoring, experimental research, impact assessment, scientific consulting and training courses in coastal marine environment. The activities, documented through more than 10 articles on JCR journals, and about 20 communications to national and international congresses and forums, allowed to gain experience in the design and conduction of descriptive and manipulative field experiments, coupled with a considerable knowledge of statistical tools for data analysis and management of data aimed at mapping the seascape with a GIS based approach. Main research topics involve the study of benthic organisms and the processes affecting their distribution at different spatio-temporal scales, Marine Protected Areas and relative effectiveness, quantification of the effects of different human impacts on coastal marine habitats and assemblages, the analysis of species recolonization and recovery trajectories of assemblages as a result of human disturbance events.

Contact Details

Official address: Via Isonzo 32, 00198 Roma, Italy
T: (+39) 06 85355476, F: (+39) 06 8543810, E: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. PEC: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., W: http://www.conisma.it

Contact person responsible for the organisation of the project’s work (the coordinator): Name: Simonetta FRASCHETTI Ph.D., E: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.