Corrado Battisti

LTER Torre Flavia Research Station · Città metropolitana Roma Capitale

We reported the data obtained by a standardized sampling (quantitative mapping method) focused on breeding birds, carried out before the LIFE17 NAT/IT/000619 'GREENCHANGE' restoring project (pre-operam step) located in the 'Mola Muti': a small wetland patch (a. 10 ha) along the Ufente river (Latina, central Italy). We recorded 32 bird species (25 b...

In Mediterranean wetlands, Phragmites australis reed beds are often intensively managed through mowing. These practices may improve wetland heterogeneity with contrasting effects on many reed-bed related birds. Here, we analyzed the habitat selection of a guild of six water-related breeding birds in a patchy managed wetland, where reed-bed mowing w...

The active participation of scientific trusts, including CISO (Centro Italiano Studi Ornitologici), in applied conservation actions plays a crucial role in addressing the challenges faced by natural and semi-natural landscapes, which are increasingly impacted by improper land-use and land-cover. This is particularly true for those landscapes where...

Waste-water treatment plants (WWTPs) are still little explored in their ecological role. This work reports data obtained from standardized sampling for the two largest Italian WWTPs, to obtain seasonal patterns (late winter, spring, and autumn) of univariate diversity metrics in bird communities. The ecological conditions, linked above all to the h...

When we compared breeding bird communities in cork oak patches located before and after a fire event, we did not observe any significant changes in the density of territorial pairs or in the diversity metrics. This counterintuitive response may be due to the characteristics of cork oak (Quercus suber), a sclerophilous tree that is very resilient to...

Anthropogenic litter, such as plastic, is investigated by the global scientific community from various fields employing diverse techniques. The goal is to assess and finally mitigate the pollutants' impacts on the natural environment. Plastic litter can accumulate in different matrices of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, impacting both biota and...

The active participation of scientific trusts, including CISO (Centro Italiano Studi Ornitologici), in applied conservation actions plays a crucial role in addressing the challenges faced by natural and semi-natural landscapes, which are increasingly impacted by improper land-use and land-cover. This is particularly true for those landscapes where...

Coypu (Myocastor coypus) was recognized as ecological engineer for its ability to alter wet habitats and build structures throughout its life cycle. Platforms still represent poorly studied structures built by this rodent for various purposes, including reproduction, resting and thermoregulation. In order to obtain data on plant composition, size a...

Using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) measurements and comparing the spectrum peaks (range 4000-600 cm −1) with reference spectra database and instrument libraries, we observed new evidence of the ingestion of microplastic particles analyzing the digestive tracts of Talitrus saltator. Specimens, sampled in central Italy, probably in...

Anthropogenic threats impacting ecological targets should be mitigated and solved using fast and schematic tools useful in conservation strategies. Herein, we suggest a mixed and quick approach implementing coarse-grained (and expert-based) threat analysis with the fine-grained (and analytical) DPSIR (driving forces, pressure, status, impact, and r...

The land transformation of traditional agro-mosaics into progressively more anthropized crops can trigger changes in small mammal communities. Here, we reported data about a treatment-control comparison between small mammal communities preyed by the Barn Owl (Tyto alba) in two sites showing different levels of anthropization: simplified crop mosaic...

Platforms are structures built by coypus for various purposes, such as reproduction, resting, and thermoregulation. In a coastal wetland of central Italy, during a study aimed at investigating the characteristics of coypu's platforms, it was recorded, for the first time worldwide, the presence of plastic in these structures. Through a transect surv...

The common snapping turtle, Chelydra serpentina (Linnaeus, 1758), is a robust aquatic turtle native to southeast North America. However, it has also been introduced to other countries through the exotic pet trade, where it has gained popularity due to its distinctive appearance and impressive size. Over the past decade, a considerable number of ind...

The article offers suggestions for conservation actions or projects which aims at solving problems associated with complex socio-ecological systems. Topics discussed include need of system with a specific structure, dynamics and internal behavior; impact of conformism, polarization, and dogmatic behavior on decision-making phase of a project; and u...

We investigated the frequencies of sympatric small mammal species in 12 habitat-types located in the extreme south of the Italian peninsula (Calabria) using trapping techniques. Ten species were detected with Apodemus sylvaticus, the most abundant species. The assemblages of small mammal species recorded in the 12 selected habitat types revealed cl...

Citation: Battisti, C.; Crucitti, P.; Dodaro, G.; Giardini, M.; Marini, F. Mapping Breeding Birds in a Karstic Sinkhole with a Comparison between Different Sampling Methods. Diversity 2024, 16, 326. https://doi. Abstract: Karstic sinkholes are peculiar structures hosting specific biological communities. Birds are still little studied in this regard...

Plastic pollution in terrestrial and freshwater environments and its accumulation along food chains has been poorly studied in birds. The Barn owl (Tyto alba) is an opportunistic and nocturnal apex predator feeding mostly on small mammals. In this note, we reported evidence of microplastics (MPs) contamination in Barn owl pellets collected, for the...

Land-cover change dynamics were investigated in a Mediterranean coastal wetland to evaluate the long-term effectiveness of nature reserve management. A multitemporal analysis of land cover maps was conducted, utilizing visual interpretation of aerial orthophotos from the summer seasons of 1996, 2008, 2015, and 2021. Landscape changes were evaluated...

The temporal trends in species’ descriptions of new amphibian species in the period 1758–2017 were studied to understand whether the increase in the number of active taxonomists could have influenced the increase in the number of species discovered over the years, and whether there was any differential attention during the various periods towards e...

We report a case study of high prey richness of small mammals recorded in Tawny Owl (Strix aluco) pellets from a site of Northern La-tium, the highest known for Italy (also after normalization with sample size). We compared our data to a large set of available literature, obtaining a significant correlation between prey species and sample size. How...

The village weaver (Ploceus cucullatus) is a common colonial nesting bird widespread throughout Sub-Sa-haran Africa. It is known to weave its nests from leaf strips from a variety of tree species (mainly coconuts trees, oil palm trees) associated with human settlement areas, grasses, and other available plants. In this regard, this bird was conside...

Coastal wetlands represent areas that can testify historical accumulation of litter. We analyzed the anthropogenic litter deposited on the channel bottom of a coastal wetland area that experienced water stress due to extreme summer dryness after about 20 years. We hypothesize that the litter accumulated in the different areas over the years reflect...

We conducted a comprehensive threat analysis of the Swinhoe's softshell turtle (Rafetus swinhoei), the most endangered freshwater turtle in the world, historically occurring along river systems in Vietnam and China, but currently almost extinct. Here, our goal was to identify the pressures along two main rivers in Vietnam (Black and Red rivers, bot...

The Critically Endangered Nubian Flapshell Turtle (Cyclanorbis elegans) is found in the White Nile River system in South Sudan and northern Uganda. Over the past few decades , its populations have sharply declined, primarily due to human-induced threats, leading to its near-extinction across almost its entire range. In this paper, we present the re...

To overcome the human-induced threats impacting on ecosystems, managers should focus on priorities. Here, we applied the expert-based Threat Analysis (TAN) in a forest urban park (Northern Italy), involving experts which ranked local threats, from the more to less impacting and following the IUCN classification. We also evaluated the level of knowl...

Marine plastic pollution is a well-recognised and debated issue affecting most marine ecosystems. Despite this, the threat of plastic pollution on seagrasses has not received significant scientific attention compared to other marine species and habitats. The present review aims to summarise the scientific data published in the last decade (January...

An assessment of the short-term effects of an outdoor music festival (Jova Beach Party event; July 2019; central Italy) on bird assemblages has been carried out, adopting a BACI (Before-After-Control-Impact) survey design, and using the point counts method both in the impact site (Impact, I; where the concert was held) and in comparable Control sit...

To overcome the human-induced threats impacting on ecosystems, managers should focus on priorities. Here, we applied the expert-based Threat Analysis (TAN) in a forest urban park (Northern Italy), involving experts which ranked local threats, from the more to less impacting and following the IUCN classification. We also evaluated the level of knowl...

Il Gambero rosso della Louisiana Procambarus clarkii, specie alloctona, come pre-da per gli uccelli acquatici: una nota dalla Palude di Torre Flavia (Italia centrale). Si riportano dati di predazione su questo crostaceo alloctono da parte di nove specie di uccelli acquatici, tra cui due (Germano reale, Anas platyrhynchos e Folaga, Fulica atra) a di...

Landscape‐based Ecological Networks (EN) have been considered a conservation tool developed to contrast habitat fragmentation (HF) as an anthropogenic process. This approach, based on the “core‐buffer‐corridors” model, has been largely applied in the Northern world to plan human‐dominated landscapes. However, an application of this process to the A...

Nutria (or coypu, Myocastor coypus), is a semi-aquatic rodent that is native to South Amer-ica and has been introduced almost all over the world since the end of the 19th century. In Europe, this rodent is considered an invasive species. In this report, we analyzed nutria fecal samples in a small coastal wetland of Central Italy, using different te...

Research on island species–area relationships (ISAR) has expanded to incorporate functional (IFDAR) and phylogenetic (IPDAR) diversity. However, relative to the ISAR, we know little about IFDARs and IPDARs, and lack synthetic global analyses of variation in form of these three categories of island diversity–area relationship (IDAR). Here, we un...

Plastics are widely distributed in all ecosystems with evident impacts on biodiversity. We aimed at examining the topic of plastic occurrence within bird nests. We conducted a systematic search on three social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) to fill the gap of knowledge on plastic nests worldwide. As a result, we observed nests w...

In this note we report the first direct evidence for Europe of coypus (Myocastor coypus) feeding on freshwater algae. Coypus fed on green algae of the genus Spirogyra (Zygnematophyceae) in a Mediterranean coastal wetland of central Italy (Torre Flavia) where Spirogyra represents the most spread filamentous macroalgal stands. By analyzing Spirogyra...

Human activities are at the origin of anthropogenic threats altering ecosystems at any hierarchical level. To mitigate them, environmental managers develop projects to obtain effective outcomes on biological targets of conservation concern. Here, we carried out two new approaches (TAN = Threat Analysis and TRA = Threat Reduction Assessment) aimed a...

Big musical events often coincide with natural spaces, and therefore they may have an impact on sensitive ecosystems. Here, a story of events that took place following a big event on an Italian beach within a Special Protection Area (SPA; hosting embryonic shifting dunes and plover birds of conservation concern) is reported. Following a theatrical...

ABSTRACT: Wildlife conservation seems unaffected by decolonization movements that recently led to removing or vandalizing several statues of geographers and colonizers worldwide. Instead, we observe an increased emphasis on total protection of species and habitats that, although strategic in a period of environmental crisis, may have grossly negati...

Marine litter is known to pose a threat to biodiversity. In this work, we wanted to verify if marine litter was overestimated as a threat by academic students when compared to other threats acting on a specific conservation target, a coastal bird of conservation concern, breeding on Mediterranean coastal dunes (Kentish Plover, Charadrius alexandrin...

We examined the entrapment effect of discarded bottles on small mammals, along a road network located in NorthWestern Sardinia (Italy). On 162 bottles, 49 (> 30%) contained at least one animal specimen (invertebrate or vertebrate) and 26 (16%) entrapped 151 small mammals: insectivorous shrews (Soricomorpha) were more frequently recorded. Larger bot...

To detect stress affecting bird communities after the construction of an industrial area (Carnia, Northeastern Italy), a before (2004)-after (2014) comparison has been performed, using the diversity/dominance (or 'stress') curves. We observed a marked decrease in number of species (31 vs. 20), in pair densities (292 vs. 120) and in Shannon diversit...

We compared a set of uni-varied diversity metrics of a guild of water-related birds (hereafter 'waterbirds') before and after a wetland restoration carried out on uncultivated (reclaimed) lands. Over a period of five years, we observed a restart of seasonal waterbirds dynamics after wetland restoration by flooding of abandoned croplands, with a sig...

We conducted a study on the taxonomic composition and diversity of thanatocoenoses of marine mollusks sampled at five sites on a circum-Sardinian island (San Pietro Island, South-Western Sardinia). The aim was to measure the differences in terms of biodiversity by analyzing shells >2 mm. We collected 71 taxa (level of diversity γ) at five different...

Fishing lines, hooks and nets represent a sub-category of macro-litter potentially entrapping plover birds nesting on sandy beaches. Here, during a winter period, the accumulation pattern of both general beach litter and fishing lines, hooks and nets was analysed on four central Italy beaches. Despite the active monthly litter removal by clean-ups,...

Asian clam, Corbicula fluminea, is an invasive mollusk species (Bivalvia, Veneridae) known to cause several negative impacts in freshwater ecosystems where it has been introduced. In the 2022 summer season a total drying up took place in the “Torre Flavia” wetland, a Special Protection Area (Latium, central Italy): it made possible a survey of bio...

The ability to retain anthropogenic marine litter by a halo-psammophilous plant formation dominated by a single prostrate species (Salsola kali) on a Sardinian beach was measured. We hypothesized that the anthropogenic litter (i) is trapped by plants to a greater extent than in control areas, and (ii) has more elongated size, mimicking the organic...

Anthropogenic litter accumulates along coasts worldwide. In addition to the flowing litter load, wind, sea currents , geomorphology and vegetation determine the distribution of litter trapped on the sandy coasts. Although some studies highlighted the role of dune plants in trapping marine litter, little is known about their efficiency as sinks and...

Coastal vegetation intercepts macroplastics and, consequently, it may represent a reservoir of anthropogenic litter and organic wrack. We aimed at investigating (i) the abundance variation of macrolitter from the beach to foredune and backdune (three cross-shore plots over 20 long-shore sectors) and (ii) the role of the alopsammophilous plants and...

We report evidence of the occurrence of the alien inva-sive crab Callinectes sapidus along the coast of Latium (central Tyrrhe-nian Sea, Italy). Original data refer to five adult females found in July 2022 in the Special Protection Area of "Torre Flavia" (Municipalities of Ladispoli and Cerveteri; IT6030020). Indirect evidence was obtained by web s...

A number of seabird species have been known to peck, displace, and ingest various plastic items including expanded polystyrene, for reasons that remain largely conjectural. Ingestion of polystyrene parts potentially causes lethal or sublethal effects on birds. Pecking can also result in the damage of polystyrene items, resulting in increased market...

A landscape mosaic of 'Campagna Romana' under risk of urbanization (Valle delle Campanelle-Valle Fontana; Rome, central Italy): a preliminary survey aimed to its conservation. We carried out a first arrangement (by field study and literature) aimed at developing a local conservation strategy. Direct and indirect evidence were collected for 53 breed...

Beach-nesting birds (plovers; Aves; Charadridae) are impacted by many natural and human-induced threats (e.g., people trampling, dogs, and natural predators). In this regard, the use of anti-predator cages on their nests is effective in order to mitigate some of these pressures (i.e., predation). To evaluate the efficacy of anti-predator cages and...

In many tropical areas of high conservation concern there is still no evidence on the effectiveness of protected areas in protecting specific components of biodiversity. Here, to assess the management effectiveness of protected areas, we carried out a field sampling design for collecting data on waterbird communities within the Nibule National Park...

The census of common water-related species as indicators is strategic for its ecological implication on assessing the status of wetlands. Here, we carried out a study on the abundance of the most common wintering rallids (Eurasian Coot, Fulica atra and Common Moorhen, Gallinula chloropus) in a remnant Mediterranean wetland (central Italy), comparin...

The current presence and local distribution of the western European hedgehog Erinaceus europaeus L. 1758, on San Pietro Island (Southern Sardinia, Italy) are here discussed for the period 2013-2021 with a short review of the species’ occurrence on the small Italian islands. The species was found in the central-eastern sector of the island, which is...

For successful conservation of biodiversity, it is vital to know whether protected areas in increasingly fragmented landscapes effectively safeguard species. However, how large habitat fragments must be, and what level of protection is required to sustain species, remains poorly known. We compiled a global dataset on almost 2000 bird species in 741...

In this work, we analyzed the temporal trends of nine selected key terms used in the habitat fragmentation arena, quantifying their number (and frequency) of recurrence on Web of Science from 1960 to 2020. The most used key (focal) terms (“stepping stones”, “habitat corridors”, “landscape connectivity”), showed a progressive increase from 1981 to 2...

Urban and periurban green areas are natural elements that can provide multiple ecosystem services. The in-terventions described in the present work has been carried out in a public green area inserted in a peri-urban context, subjected to a previous work of environmental requalification. They consisted in placing within the area attractive structur...

We provided data from mollusk shells (Cephalopoda, Bivalvia, Gastropoda) sampled in a large sample of feeding sites of a nesting colony of Larus michahellis, located in a circum-Sardinian Island. We recorded 59 items (8 taxa) from 298 sites with a dominance (>74%) of cuttlebones of Sepia cuttlefish and, only secondarily, valves of Mytilus galloprov...

Dehesas (i.e., substeppic prairies with Quercus suber) represent a poorly studied Mediterranean habitat type of high eco-biogeographic interest. Here, we applied a point-transect method along a yearly cycle (from spring to autumn), to focus on seasonal differences in bird assemblages inhabiting a Dehesas landscape in north-western Sardinia (Italy)....

Alhough the role as pest of the two most common invasive parakeets (rose-ringed parakeet, Psittacula krameri and monk parakeet, Myiopsitta monachus) has been largely recognized, nevertheless analytical data on foraging diet on cultivated plants are still scanty in non-native countries. Here, we carried out a revision about the impact of these birds...

Anthropogenic plastic litter is widespread in all environments, with particular emphasis on aquatic habitats. Specifically, although freshwater mammals are important as they are at the top of food web, research mainly focus on marine animals, while only few studies have been carried out on freshwater mammals. The main gap is that microplastics (MP)...

We applied two recent approaches largely used in biological conservation: Threat Analysis (TAN) and Threat Reduction Assessments (TRAs), assessing the effectiveness of a project fo-cused on two water-related bird species (common tern, Sterna hirundo and little tern, Sternula albif-rons), commonly breeding in some wetlands of Italy. We used the IUCN...

During the project management actions, a chain of fine-grained events occur, both of bio-ecological and anthropic origin. While some may be expected or planned, others may be unforeseen. This work proposes the drafting of a 'diary of events' reporting bio-ecological and anthropogenic events, these last having both negative and positive impacts. Thi...

In January 2019, Italy banned the sale of plastic cotton buds, which is one of the most abundant litter items entering the sea and then washing ashore. However, since the ban came into force, no studies have been carried out to assess whether the measure has actually led to the reduction of plastic cotton buds accumulating on Italian coasts. Here w...

We investigated the temporal changes from spring to summer of the stranded litter and the composition of plastic encrusting biota along an Italian beach. Our findings highlight a higher quantity of litter (average value 1510.67 ± 581.27 items) in spring, particularly plastic material with a composition driven by currents, winds and waves transporte...

We explored the structure of plant assemblages that settles around the anthills of a guild of Hymenoptera Formicidae (Messor wasmanni Krausse 1910, Tapinoma nigerrimum Nylander 1856 and Aphaenogaster spinosa Emery 1878), observable in urban grasslands dominated by Dasypyrum villosum (Rome, Central Italy). Since it is known that ants act as a distu...

Background Declining biodiversity of marine ecosystems is impairing the functionality of seas and shore and their capability to provide ecological services and recover from perturbations due to human pressure. The European Union issued the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), providing criteria and methods to analyse the dominant pressures o...

Traditional fish farming carried out in wetland is declining in many countries of Mediterranean Europe. This decline can lead to a lack of management of the reeds that tend to age progressively. In this work we compared, through a wide temporal range (2001-2019), the densities of four habitat-specialized birds (warblers), strictly linked to Phragmi...

Kinosternon subrubrum Bonnaterre, 1789 is a North American semi-aquatic freshwater turtle found primarily in the mid-Atlantic and southeastern regions of the United States. This primarily carnivorous species prefers lentic freshwater systems, but it also has been reported to inhabit brackish marshes. Here, we provided the first records of K. subr...

Peninsular effect is an anomalous gradient in plant and animal species richness from base to tip of a given peninsula. This pattern has been studied intensely on various taxonomic groups, but with scarce attention for using standardized data. Here, using presence-absence data normalized by the field effort, the peninsular effect on the species rich...

Citizen Science involves people as part of a scientific enquiry. However, in an age of great environmental changes, citizens are faced with degradation that affects ecosystem structure and function. Their role as drivers of change can be also relevant for biodiversity conservation. As in Citizen Science, where the citizens, properly trained, can in...

Urban rivers may perform important ecological roles and provide many ecosystem services, especially in urban contexts. Considering this, River Contracts were officially introduced in 2000, during the Second Forum of the World Water Council, as partici-pative agreements aimed at managing the complexity of fluvial ecosystems. Collecting data on fluvi...

Carpobrotus is a genus of succulent Aizoaceae originating from South Africa that has become invasive in the Mediterranean and represents a serious threat in coastal ecosystems. On the small island of San Pietro (Sardinia), Carpobrotus sp. pl. is invading also habitats far from the sea. We surveyed the distribution of Carpobrotus on the island using...

This study analyzes the occurrence and distribution of plastic litter and the entrapment of plastic by wrack beached on a natural reserve. Large microplastics (2.5 - 5 mm) were the most abundant plastic size category detected. The main color and shape were white and fragment, respectively. The plastics entrapped by egagropiles were mainly transpar...

In a small Mediterranean island (South Sardinia), we compared two non-native plant communities (respectively dominated by Malephora crocea and Mesembrianthemum cristallinum), located on an insular rocky cliff syntopic with a nesting gull's colony, with a native one (with Limonium sardoum dominant) used as a "control" (without nesting colony). Uni-v...

We sampled 70 urban ponds (0.001 to >1 ha) in Rome, Italy, to obtain richness and abundance data for wintering wild birds and domestic birds in relation to pond size. The aim was to test the hypothesis that the species-area relationship differs between wild and domestic birds, with the presence of the latter linked with anthropogenic factors, not p...

Alien species are considered one of the main threats to biodiversity, and amongst them turtles are the most traded taxon worldwide. We are reporting observations on the Chinese striped-necked turtle (Mauremys sinensis Gray, 1834) and particularly the first evidence of reproduction in a European wetland. During an eradication project of non-native t...

Dunal plants may affect the patterns of deposition of beach litter. In this study, we aimed at evaluating if Carpobrotus spp. patches may act as a litter trap in coastal dune systems. To do so, we counted the number of macrolitter occurring in both Carpobrotus and control (embryo dune vegetation) patches classifying each item into categories accord...

We investigated the accumulation of litter along a transition gradient from the dunal beaches (B), to the backdunes (BD), to the channels of a coastal wetland (W), considering both the total litter and a sub-category represented by expanded polystyrene (EPS). Using a removal sampling technique carried out in spring (April and May), we hypothesized...

We report first data on the fine-grained structure (branch diameter, length and diversity) in three different sectors [core (central side), buffer (peripheral side), and nest chamber)] of a nest of Monk Parakeets (Myiopsitta monachus) from a non-native breeding site located in an urban park (Rome, central Italy). The central core sector was charact...

We carried out a study on dynamics of the Common Moorhen, Gallinula chloropus, a synanthropic rallid (Aves, Gruiformes), to elucidate the adverse effects this species has possibly suffered from the markedly increased habitat degradation that has been taking place over the last decades at Boussedra Pond, northeastern Algeria. During the period 2015-...

We report the first case of sexual interaction between two phylogenetically unrelated species (coypu Myocastor coypus and pond slider Trachemys scripta, a freshwater pond turtle), both of them non-native in the study area, a remnant coastal wetland of Tyrrhenian, central Italy (41°57'34.0''N 12°02'58.0''E). We inductively propose two different hypo...

Abstract We studied the habitat preferences at three different landscape scales of Eurasian collared dove (Streptopelia decaocto), a bird which recently colonized the Western and Southern Europe, with the aim to corroborate their synanthropic ecology and to propose it as indicator of human-induced landscape change. We carried out this study in a sm...

We reviewed the historical and recent data about the unexpected absence of a generalist ubiquitous mammal (Savi’s pine vole Microtus savii, Rodentia) from a large sub-regional coastal land reclaimed area of Tyrrhenian central Italy, trying to search for causes explaining it. We assessed the possible role of different factors for different sub-areas...