Long-term studies allow to evaluate all the significant changes which an ecosystem encounters with time. In this respect, the Mar Piccolo of Taranto represents a good example for the studies on the phytobenthos. Indeed: in the Twenties the first researches were carried out; up to the Seventies they were occasionally performed; in the Eighties they became continuous and are still ongoing as such. Therefore, the presence of historical series of data gives the chance of assessing both qualitative and quantitative modifications, which occurred against the phytobenthic communities of the basin. Irma Pierpaoli was the first phycologist in Taranto. She was a young teacher of Natural Sciences from Ancona, who taught in Taranto in a secondary school from 1920 to 1925, dabbling in picking seaweeds along the Mar Piccolo shore before going to school in the morning. Of this activity, she left two published papers and an herbarium.
Up to the second half of the Eighties’, no phycological information are available on the Mar Piccolo. But, in 1986, the Phycological Laboratory was set up at the Istituto Talassografico, now CNR-IRSA, and the orderly study of the Mar Piccolo phytobenthos began from both a floristic and a vegetational point of view. Also the collection of quantitative data started. From 1987 up today several series of different data became available.