Abstract
The spatial distribution and abundance of fish larvae are useful indicators to better understand the reproductive strategies of the species and to identify the possible spawning areas. This study defines the major composition patterns and the community structure of the ichthyoplankton assemblage in the Southern Tyrrhenian Sea and analyse the influence of environmental factors that control these patterns. Samples were taken along a wide coastal area of Sicily extending for 2300 km2 during early spring 2007, in 24 stations across 11 shelf-slope transects with a Bongo net. The larval fish community consisted of 2073 individuals, further to 2750 fish eggs; 33 species belonging to 17 families were identified. Myctophum punctatum was the most abundant species followed by Cyclothone braueri, Lampanyctus pusillus, Lampanyctus crocodilus, Hygophum hygomii and Notoscopelus bolini. The family most represented was Myctophidae followed by Gonostomatidae, Paralepididae, Bothidae, Stomiidae, Callyonimidae and Gobiidae. Ichthyoplanktonic community abundance and composition in the Southern Tyrrhenian Sea were strongly correlated with the environmental factors, like bottom depth, salinity, temperature and fluorescence. Two different areas were highlighted as oceanographic constrains, grouping together the westernmost and the easternmost stations, that resulted influenced by different water masses. Different species assemblages between the two areas were also identified.
Similar content being viewed by others
Seasonal patterns in the mesopelagic fish community and associated deep scattering layers of an enclosed deep basin
Investigating the etiologies behind emergent mass mortalities of farmed Liza carinata juveniles from coastal farms at Damietta, Egypt
Fish species identification and composition across the Scotia Sea during austral summer 2019
Funding
This research received no external funding.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Reprints and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Granata, A., Minutoli, R., Guglielmo, L. et al. Assemblage structure of ichthyoplankton communities in the southern tyrrhenian sea (western mediterranean sea).
Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-45793-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-45793-7
Keywords
- Ichthyoplankton
- community structure
- spatial distribution
- hydrology
- Southern Tyrrhenian Sea
Source: Ecology - nature.com
