The Zanclean marine fish fauna and palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of a coastal marine setting in the eastern Mediter
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ORIGINAL PAPER
The Zanclean marine fish fauna and palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of a coastal marine setting in the eastern Mediterranean Konstantina Agiadi 1 & Christina Giamali 1,2 & Angela Girone 3 & Pierre Moissette 1,4 & Efterpi Koskeridou 1 & Vasileios Karakitsios 1 Received: 23 January 2019 / Revised: 14 April 2019 / Accepted: 26 September 2019 # Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Fossil records of nearshore, shallow marine fish communities are rare. Here, we present the rich and diverse fish fauna of a coastal setting in the eastern part of the Mediterranean during the early Pliocene, which comprises 54 taxa, 77% of which are extant and currently occupy the same shores. We analyse these assemblages to estimate the palaeodepth, the substratum and the climatic and oceanographic conditions prevailing in the region at the time. Furthermore, we review the stratigraphic and geographic distribution of the identified taxa from the Tortonian until today, to establish patterns and trends in the evolution of the Mediterranean coastal fish fauna. Contrary to expectations, the Pliocene coastal fauna is very similar to the Miocene and to the Pleistocene in terms of functional traits as well as taxonomically. Replacements of species seem to have been gradual, through multiple extirpations and reintroductions that led to the final extinction of mostly tropical species from the basin, while subtropical– temperate taxa invaded to take their place. Keywords Pliocene . Ionian Sea . Otoliths . Teleost . Greece . Biogeography
Introduction Coastal ecosystems are strongly affected by natural and anthropogenic stressors, especially in the semi-restricted Mediterranean basin. However, the long-term effect of these processes on fish populations is largely unknown Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12549-019-00404-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Konstantina Agiadi [email protected]
due to insufficient data from the geological past. Few studies have explored coastal fish faunas from the Pleistocene and the Pliocene of the Mediterranean (Nolf and Girone 2000, 2006; Girone 2007; Agiadi et al. 2013a, 2018, 2019). In an attempt to improve our knowledge on Pliocene fish, in this study, we investigate the coastal fish fauna established in the eastern Mediterranean during the early Pliocene by identifying fossil fish otolith assemblages in a Zanclean sedimentary sequence cropping out in Agia Triada (southwest Peloponnesus, Greece). We examine the stratigraphic and geographic distribution of the identified fish taxa to draw conclusions on the evolution of the Mediterranean coastal ecosystems. Finally, we use these otolith assemblages, in conjunction with previously published data on the invertebrate fauna from the same area (Koskeridou et al. 2017), to extract information on the palaeoenvironment and its evolution during the studied interval.
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