Benthic foraminifera as indicators of environmental changes and human impact in the coastal marine system.

Benthic foraminifera are a meiofaunal group of microorganisms that are particularly abundant in marine sediments. Their occurrence and distribution reflect environmental conditions in the bottom water and sediment surface layers (Murray, 2006 and references therein). Hence, this group has been recently proposed as a biomonitoring proxy to determine the Ecological Quality Status (Alve et al., 2009) both in Mediterranean and extra-Mediterranean areas (Bouchet et al., 2018 and references therein). In addition, their small shells are well preserved along the sediment record allowing us to reconstruct the historical evolution of particular areas, and thereby, to obtain insight into the baseline conditions preceding the present period of anthropogenic impact (Francescangeli et al., 2016; Romano et al., 2016). This unique foraminifera feature represents a clear advantage compared to (other) meiofaunal and/or macrofaunal organisms that are currently used in marine biomonitoring studies. Over the last decades, the use of these organisms in marine biomonitoring has largely increased. The interest in benthic foraminifera has partly been driven by government policies and programs aimed at developing suitable, non-invasive bioindicators of marine environmental quality. Here, we report some field-based research carried out along the Italian coasts.