The Station Marine d'Endoume, Marseille: 150 years of natural history.

When marine natural sciences began to be the concern of most European scientists, in the middle of the 19th century, Marseille, in southern France, was no exception. The creation, ca. 150 years ago, of the first Zoology Laboratory of the Faculty of Sciences of Marseille took place in 1868. Under the leadership of Antoine-Fortuné Marion, it soon led to the creation of the Station Marine d'Endoume (SME) in 1889. Marion's pioneering work survived both world wars and was then taken to another dimension by Jean-Marie Pérès, head of the marine station from 1948 to 1983. This institution is still alive to date. We here inventoried all the taxa described by SME scientists (1870 to 2021) and arranged them in a public database. Three main periods of activity at the SME are described, as well as the focus made through time to different groups of taxa, selected ecosystems, or biogeographic areas. Through many examples, it was possible to document how these naturalistic, taxonomic descriptions contributed to a broader scientific knowledge within this period. Finally, we discussed trends in taxonomic and naturalistic research, based on the SME experience.

An ecosystem-based approach to assess the status of Mediterranean algae-dominated shallow rocky reefs.

A conceptual model was constructed for the functioning the algae-dominated rocky reef ecosystem of the Mediterranean Sea. The Ecosystem-Based Quality Index (reef-EBQI) is based upon this model. This index meets the objectives of the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive. It is based upon (i) the weighting of each compartment, according to its importance in the functioning of the ecosystem; (ii) biological parameters assessing the state of each compartment; (iii) the aggregation of these parameters, assessing the quality of the ecosystem functioning, for each site; (iv) and a Confidence Index measuring the reliability of the index, for each site. The reef-EBQI was used at 40 sites in the northwestern Mediterranean. It constitutes an efficient tool, because it is based upon a wide set of functional compartments, rather than upon just a few species; it is easy and inexpensive to implement, robust and not redundant with regard to already existing indices.

An ecosystem-based approach to assess the status of a Mediterranean ecosystem, the Posidonia oceanica seagrass meadow.

Biotic indices, which reflect the quality of the environment, are widely used in the marine realm. Sometimes, key species or ecosystem engineers are selected for this purpose. This is the case of the Mediterranean seagrass Posidonia oceanica, widely used as a biological quality element in the context of the European Union Water Framework Directive (WFD). The good quality of a water body and the apparent health of a species, whether or not an ecosystem engineer such as P. oceanica, is not always indicative of the good structure and functioning of the whole ecosystem. A key point of the recent Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) is the ecosystem-based approach. Here, on the basis of a simplified conceptual model of the P. oceanica ecosystem, we have proposed an ecosystem-based index of the quality of its functioning, compliant with the MSFD requirements. This index (EBQI) is based upon a set of representative functional compartments, the weighting of these compartments and the assessment of the quality of each compartment by comparison of a supposed baseline. The index well discriminated 17 sites in the north-western Mediterranean (French Riviera, Provence, Corsica, Catalonia and Balearic Islands) covering a wide range of human pressure levels. The strong points of the EBQI are that it is easy to implement, non-destructive, relatively robust, according to the selection of the compartments and to their weighting, and associated with confidence indices that indicate possible weakness and biases and therefore the need for further field data acquisition.

Benthic indicators: From subjectivity to objectivity - Where is the line?

Over the last few years, the interest in using benthic indicators to assess marine environments has increased dramatically after a rather long period of relative stagnation, mostly due to the need to assess the status of coastal marine waters required by North American and European regulations. Numerous papers on this topic have been published in the domain of ecology, using a variety of different terms to refer to two categories of information: benthic species and the status of benthic communities. Nowadays, the abundant literature on these two categories makes it possible to comment on (1) the definition of the different terms used by benthic researchers, (2) the current increase of papers of rising complexity about benthic indicators, and (3) the subjectivity and objectivity involved in using benthic indicators. Faced with the increase in the number of methods, we recommend pragmatism and thus the transfer of simple methods to the research consultancies that are responsible for assessing benthic quality in numerous impact studies. Using certain procedures, such as the "sentinel species", the best professional judgement (BPJ) and taxonomic sufficiency (TS), should clearly be encouraged.