The Mediterranean Sea is the world's second-largest biodiversity hotspot and has been impacted by several environmental changes and human activities since pre-historic times. We present the results of a systematic review of the published literature on the nature and extent of these impacts on the ancient-historic Mediterranean marine ecosystems. We aim to provide an overview of the current state of knowledge and identify research gaps about climate and human-activity impacts on commercially relevant species of marine mammals, fishes, and molluscs in the Mediterranean Sea over the last 130 thousand years until the Industrial Revolution (the year 1850). In most of the reviewed publications, species were used as indicators of past climatic conditions or human subsistence strategies. A research gap remains, however, in quantifying their effects on marine ecosystems. Based on our results, we identify data trends in time and space and by functional group. Data are available primarily from the Holocene rather than the Late Pleistocene, reflecting a heterogeneous availability of records. The Adriatic Sea is underrepresented among subregions, which may indicate variability of accessible data between subregions rather than an actual lack of information. Marine mammals were less studied than fishes and molluscs in the three subregions. Despite the lack of standardised guidelines to conduct studies and the subsequent variability in information, this work can provide novel insights into the importance of studying the evolution of research focused on past environmental and anthropogenic impacts in the Mediterranean Sea. Research efforts need to be balanced to examine both economically and ecologically valuable species in the marine ecosystem. We also reinforce the need for uniforming approaches to gather data in a useable format for posterior research.

中文翻译：

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地中海的商业相关物种：从晚更新世到工业革命的视角


地中海是世界第二大生物多样性热点地区，自史前时代以来就受到多种环境变化和人类活动的影响。我们介绍了对已发表文献的系统评价结果，这些文献关于这些影响对古代地中海海洋生态系统的性质和程度。我们旨在概述当前的知识状况，并确定在工业革命（1850 年）之前的过去 13 万年中，气候和人类活动对地中海商业相关海洋哺乳动物、鱼类和软体动物物种的影响的研究差距。在大多数被审查的出版物中，物种被用作过去气候条件或人类生存策略的指标。然而，在量化它们对海洋生态系统的影响方面仍然存在研究差距。根据我们的结果，我们确定了时间和空间以及功能组的数据趋势。数据主要来自全新世而不是晚更新世，这反映了记录的异质可用性。亚得里亚海在子区域中的代表性不足，这可能表明子区域之间可访问数据的可变性，而不是实际缺乏信息。在三个亚区中，海洋哺乳动物的研究少于鱼类和软体动物。尽管缺乏标准化的研究指南以及随之而来的信息可变性，但这项工作可以为研究专注于地中海过去环境和人为影响的研究演变的重要性提供新的见解。研究工作需要平衡，以检查海洋生态系统中具有经济和生态价值的物种。 我们还强调了统一方法以可用格式收集数据以进行后验研究的必要性。