Santa Maria di Leuca Province (Mediterranean Sea): Identification of Suitable Mounds for Cold-Water Coral Settlement Using Geomorphometric Proxies and Maxent Methods

The Santa Maria di Leuca (SML) cold-water coral province (northern Ionian Sea) has the largest occurrence of a living white coral community currently known in the Mediterranean Sea. Madrepora oculata and Lophelia pertusa, identified as marking sensitive habitats of relevance by the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean, have been observed heterogeneously distributed on the summits of several mounds. This particularly patchy and...