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The introduction and successful expansion of tropical species into temperate systems is being exacerbated by climate change, and it is particularly important to identify the impacts that those species may have, especially when habitat-forming species are involved. Seagrass meadows are key shallow coastal habitats that provide critical ecosystem services worldwide, and they are threatened by the arrival of non-native macroalgae. Here, we examined the effects of Halimeda incrassata, a tropical alga that has recently colonized the Mediterranean Sea, on epifaunal assemblages associated with Cymodocea nodosa seagrass meadows of Mallorca Island (Western Mediterranean Sea). This invasive macroalga is an ecological engineer and thus has a high potential of modifying native habitats. A seagrass meadow colonized by H. incrassata exhibited important changes on associated epifaunal assemblages, with an increase in abundance and diversity, particularly driven by higher abundances of Gammaridae, Polychaeta, Copepoda and Caprellidae. Given the key ecological contribution of epifauna to food webs, these alterations will likely have important implications for overall food web structure and ecosystem functioning of native ecosystems., SI

The warming of the surface ocean is expected to increase the stratification of the upper water column. This would decrease the efficiency of the wind-induced mixing, reducing the nutrient supply to the euphotic layer and the productivity of the oceans. Climatic projections show that the Mediterranean Sea will experience a strong warming and salting along the twenty first century. Nevertheless, very few works have found and quantified changes in the water column stratification of the Western Mediterranean. In this work, we obtain time series of Mixed Layer Depth (MLD) along the Spanish Mediterranean waters and the Gulf of Cádiz, using periodic CTD profiles collected under the umbrella of the Ocean Observing system of the Instituto Español de Oceanografía (IEO-CSIC). The length of the time series analyzed is variable, depending on the geographical area, but in some cases these time series extend from the beginning of the 1990s decade. Our results show that at present, no statistically significant changes can be detected. These results are confirmed by the analysis of MLD time series obtained from Argo profilers. Some of the meteorological factors that could affect the water column stratification (wind intensity and precipitation rates) did not experience significant changes for the 1990-2021 period, neither were observed long-term changes in the chlorophyll concentration. The hypothesis proposed to explain this lack of trends, is that the salinity increase of the surface waters has compensated for the warming, and consequently, the density of the upper layer of the Western Mediterranean (WMED) has remained constant. As the wind intensity has not experienced significant trends, the stratification of the Spanish Mediterranean waters and those of the Gulf of Cádiz would have not been affected. Nevertheless, we do not discard that our results are a consequence of the short length of the available time series and the large variance of the variables analyzed, evidencing the importance of the maintenance of the ocean monitoring programs., SI

Gammacoronavirus and Deltacoronavirus are known to circulate among wild birds (Hepojoki et al., 2017;Canuti et al., 2019). [...]a hypothetical transmission of CoVs between wild birds and mammals in the marine environment may occur, as for influenza A virus (Runstadler and Puryear, 2020). Occasional predation of bats has been reported for an aquatic mustelid that can be observed in the sea: the Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra) (Forman et al., 2004). [...]dolphin morbillivirus reservoirs were recently also detected in Eurasian otters along the Mediterranean Sea coast (Padalino et al., 2019). Every year thousands of MA-BA are stranded on the beaches around the world (Alvarado-Rybak et al., 2020), and these animals are generally studied by different local scientific institutions and agencies. [...]a wide range of molecular and cellular tools for CoV detection is now available, either developed for COVID-19 diagnosis, or for CoVs (Woo et al., 2014). [...]marine interdisciplinary science can contribute to answer questions concerning the COVID-19 pandemic and prepare us for future zoonotic disease epidemics by (1) identifying potential CoV reservoirs in the marine environment, and (2) evaluating CoV transmission from MA-BA to humans, from humans to MA-BA, and between MA-BA.