Figure 1.
Living specimens of Leptopsammia pruvoti in an overhang on the Italian coasts.
Figure 2.
Map of the Italian coastline indicating sites where corals were collected.
Abbreviations and coordinates of the sites in decreasing order of latitude: GN Genova, 44°20′N, 9°08′E; CL Calafuria, 43°27′N, 10°21′E; LB Elba Isle, 42°45′N, 10°24′E; PL Palinuro, 40°02′N, 15°16′E; SC Scilla, 38°01′N, 15°38′E; PN Pantelleria Isle, 36°45′N, 11°57′E.
Table 1.
Sea surface temperature, number of patches and collected samples, L∞, K, r2 (coefficient of determination of the semi-log regression of Eq. 2, which is an estimator of population structure stability) and demographic parameter values of each sampled populations.
Figure 3.
Relationships between mean growth rate and age of each population.
Data were fitted with exponential curves to verify the exponential decrease of growth rate with age assumed by the von Bertalanffy growth model. n = number of individuals dated by computerized tomography scans (CT).
Figure 4.
General age-length von Bertalanffy growth curve (see Eq. 1) describing the growth in all populations.
Dotted line indicates the maximum expected length of corals in all populations (L∞ = 15.4 mm). Points indicate the age/size of all samples in all populations dated by CT scans (n = 175) from which the general growth curve was obtained.
Figure 5.
Age class structures of each population.
The lines indicate the theoretical distributions. The observed (arrow) and theoretical (black square) age class containing the mean age of the individuals of sampled population are indicated. The observed (black column) and theoretical (black circle) age at maximum percentage biomass are indicated. Asterisks indicate the age at sexual maturity. Data for the Calafuria population (CL) are from [30]. n number of individuals dated by growth curves.
Table 2.
Correlation analyses between sea surface temperature (independent variable) and demographic parameters (dependent variables) in the sampled populations.