Tommaso Russo

Professional Summary

• I try to contribute to the achievement of a Sustainable Development using ecological ap- proaches in marine environments

• My research lines are dedicated to the study of the human impact on marine ecosystems through fishing and pollution

• Over the years, I have focused mainly on overfishing, physical impact on substrates and biocenosis, and loss of biodiversity

• My approaches range from the use of satellite data to DNA, passing through statistics and artificial intelligence

• I love math and computer science and I like to develop new methodological approaches and open-source models (especially in the R environment)

• I think Ecology is the science of complexity and can only be applied with solid interdisciplinary bases

Education

• 2005 - Doctor of Philosophy in Evolutionary Biology and Ecology. Thesis title: New insights into larval finfish ecomorphology: shape and trophic habits changes during ontogenesis. Institution: University of Rome Tor Vergata

• 2001 - Master’s Degree (MSc) in Biological Science. Institution: University of Rome Tor Vergata

Memberships

• 2018 - ongoing - Board of the School of Doctorate in Evolutionary Biology and Ecology. http://http://www.dottoratobee.uniroma2.it/

• 2010 - ongoing - Inter-University Consortium of Marine Science - CoNISMA. http://www. conisma.it

• 2020 - ongoing - Member of the Working Group on Fisheries Benthic Impact and Trade-offs (WGFBIT - https://www.ices.dk/community/groups/Pages/WGFBIT.aspx) of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES)

• 2022 - ongoing - Associated to the Italian National Research Council, Institute for Marine Biological Resources and Biotechnologies

Roles

• 2021 - Italian National Focal Point for the FAO AdriaMed Project. http://www.faoadriamed. org/

• 2021 - Chair of the ICES Review group RGTRADE3 follwing the request by the European Commission to deliver “advice on a set of management options to reduce the impact of mobile bottom contacting fishing gears on seafloor habitats, and for each option provide a trade-off analysis between fisheries and the seafloor”

• 2021 - Panelist for the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) within the Sustainable Management of UK Marine Resources research programme https://nerc.ukri.org/research/funded/programmes/ marine-resources/

• 2010 - ongoing - Involved as reviewer for more than 40 International ISI Journals including: Science, Nature Communications, ICES Journal of Marine Science, Biological Journal of the Lynnean Society, Hydrobiologia, Journal of Sea Research, and Deep Sea Reserch Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography

• 2010 - ongoing - Involved as invited expert in several Expert Working Groups of the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF - https://stecf.jrc.ec.europa. eu/)

• 2020 - ongoing - Associate Editor of Frontiers in Marine Science - Marine Evolutionary Biology, Biogeography and Species Diversity and Guest Associate Editor della rivista Frontiers in Marine Science - Marine Fisheries, Aquaculture and Living Resources https://loop. frontiersin.org/people/134997/editorial

Teaching activity

• Class of Ecology - First level Master Degree in Biological Science - Department of Biology - University of Rome Tor Vergata

• Class of Informatics Methods for Biology - Second level Master Degree in Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Applied Anthropology

• Class of Ecology - Second level Master Degree in Health and safety sciences - Department of Biomedicine and Prevention, University of Rome Tor Vergata

• Class of Fisheries Biology and Aquaculture - Second level Master Degree in Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Applied Anthropology

• Class of Marine Biology - First level Master Degree in Biological Science - Department of Biology - University of Rome Tor Vergata

   

Research Projects and Grants

• MAREA Project - tenders MARE/2009/05 - LOT 1 – Mediterranean (http://mareaproject. net/contracts/10/overview/) - Task 4.2 Coordinator: Development of a statistical spatial approach for the identification of stocks and related boundaries

• Flag Project RITMARE – WP2 AZ2 (http://www.ritmare.it/) - Action Leader: Modelling of commercial stocks with particular emphasis to the role of fishing effort by VMS data

• MANTIS: Marine protected Areas Network Towards Sustainable fisheries in the Central Mediterranean - European Commission , DG MARE Agreement number – SI2 - 721911WP Role: Leader Modelling of spatial interaction between target species and fisheries including connectivity among Marine Managed Areas. http://jadran.izor.hr/mantis/index.html

• H2020 Research Project MINOUW Applying science, innovation and partnership to reduce discards in European fisheries. http://minouw-project.eu/

• ABIOMMED – Support coherent and coordinated assessment of biodiversity and measures across Mediterranean for the next 6-year cycle of the MSFD implementation. https://ec. europa.eu/environment/marine/projects/index_en.htm

Selected Publications 

Sbrana, A. et al. (2022). Ask the shark: Blackmouth catshark (galeus melastomus) as a sentinel of plastic waste on the seabed. Marine Biology, 169(7). https://doi.org/10.

1007/s00227-022-04084-1

Maiello, G. et al. (2022). Little samplers, big fleet: eDNA metabarcoding from commercial trawlers enhances ocean monitoring. Fisheries Research, 249. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fishres.2022.106259

Russo, T. et al. (2022). Defend as you can, react quickly: The effects of the COVID-19 shock on a large fishery of the mediterranean sea. Frontiers in Marine Science, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2022.824857

Russo, T. et al. (2021). All is fish that comes to the net: Metabarcoding for rapid fisheries catch assessment. Ecological Applications, 31(2). https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.2273 D’Andrea, L. et al. (2020). The MINOUWApp: A web-based tool in support of by- catch and discards management. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 192(12). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-020-08704-5

D’Andrea, L. et al.. (2020). smartR: An r package for spatial modelling of fisheries and scenario simulation of management strategies. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 11(7),

859–868. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13394 Mendo, T. et al. (2019). Effect of temporal and spatial resolution on identification of fishing activities in small-scale fisheries using pots and traps. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 76(6), 1601–1609. https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsz073

Russo, T. et al. (2019). Predicting fishing footprint of trawlers from environmental and fleet data: An application of artificial neural networks. Frontiers in Marine Science, 6. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2019.00670

Cianchetti-Benedetti, M. et al. (2018). Interactions between commercial fishing vessels and a pelagic seabird in the southern mediterranean sea. BMC Ecology, 18(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12898-018-0212-x

Amoroso, R. O. et al. (2018). Bottom trawl fishing footprints on the worlds continental shelves. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115(43), E10275–E10282. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1802379115

Russo, T. et al. (2018). A model combining landings and VMS data to estimate landings by fishing ground and harbor. Fisheries Research, 199, 218–230. https: //doi.org/10.1016/j.fishres.2017.11.002

Eigaard, O. R. et al.. (2017). The footprint of bottom trawling in european waters: Distribution, intensity, and seabed integrity. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 74(3), 847–865. https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsw194

Russo, T. et al. (2016). Assessing the fishing footprint using data integrated from different tracking devices: Issues and opportunities. Ecological Indicators, 69, 818–827. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2016.04.043

Russo, T. et al.. (2016). Modeling landings profiles of fishing vessels: An application of self-organizing maps to VMS and logbook data. Fisheries Research, 181, 34–47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fishres.2016.04.005

Russo, T. et al. (2015). Modelling the strategy of mid-water trawlers targeting small pelagic fish in the adriatic sea and its drivers. Ecological Modelling, 300, 102–113.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2014.12.001

Russo, T. et al. (2014). SMART: A spatially explicit bio-economic model for assessing and managing demersal fisheries, with an application to italian trawlers in the strait of sicily. PLoS ONE, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0086222

Russo, T. et al. (2013). Spatial indicators of fishing pressure: Preliminary analyses and possible developments. Ecological Indicators, 26, 141–153. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2012.11.002

Russo, T. et al. (2011). When behaviour reveals activity: Assigning fishing effort to me?tiers based on VMS data using artificial neural networks. Fisheries Research, 111 (1-2), 53–64. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fishres.2011.06.011

Russo, T. et al. (2011). New insights in interpolating fishing tracks from VMS data for different me?tiers. Fisheries Research, 108(1), 184–194. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. fishres.2010.12.020

Russo, T. et al. (2009). Le?vy processes and stochastic von bertalanffy models of growth, with application to fish population analysis. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 258(4), 521–529. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2009.01.033