Francesca MaruccoUniversità degli Studi di Torino | UNITO
Francesca Marucco
PhD - University of Montana, USA
About
39
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Introduction
Additional affiliations
November 2013 - June 2018
Publications
Publications (39)
Wolf populations are recovering and expanding across Europe, causing conflicts with livestock owners. To mitigate these conflicts and reduce livestock damages, authorities spend considerable resources to compensate damages, support damage prevention measures, and manage wolf populations. However, the effectiveness of these measures remains largely...
Wildlife dispersal directly influences population expansion patterns, and may have indirect effects on the spread of wildlife diseases. Despite its importance to conservation, little is known about dispersal for several species. Dispersal processes in expanding wolf (Canis lupus) populations in Europe is not well documented. Documenting the natural...
Ecological knowledge is considered an important factor in environmental policy-making. However, the opportunity for ecologists to influence policy can often occur within discrete time policy windows, and seizing these opportunities has been heavily emphasized as a recent global conservation need. In 2017 the Natura 2000 Conservation Measures have b...
The project Status and Conservation of the Alpine Lynx Population SCALP is an ongoing
programme aiming to coordinate the Eurasian lynx Lynx lynx monitoring, conservation
and management activities in the Alps, but the monitoring approach has recently been
expanded to the neighbouring Dinaric and Jura Mountains. The long-term goal of the
SCALP is to...
Sharing space with large carnivores on a human-dominated continent like Europe results in multiple conflictful interactions with human interests, of which depredation on livestock is the most widespread. We conducted an analysis of the impact by all four European large carnivores on sheep farming in 10 European countries, during the period 2010-201...
The promotion of sustainable tourism and outdoor sports can represent an important way to couple environmental conservation strategies and economic enhancement in marginal and Alpine areas. In this context catch and release fly fishing zones can represent an interesting tool, although no data is available on the effectiveness of these practices on...
Background:
Wild carnivores such as the grey wolf (Canis lupus), red fox (Vulpes vulpes) and golden jackal (Canis aureus) are recognized hosts of Dirofilaria immitis. However, few studies have focused on their actual role in the epidemiology of heartworm infection. This study describes the prevalence and distribution of D. immitis in wolves in a h...
Dirofilaria immitis is the causative agent of heartworm
disease, a worldwide distributed parasitosis of dogs.
Other canids, such as fox (Vulpes vulpes) and jackal (Canis
latrans), are deemed as accidental or marginal hosts, in
which adults of D.immitis rarely produce circulating
microfilariae.
However, no studies define the epidemiological role of...
Free-ranging grey wolves ( Canis lupus ), which are presently recolonizing Italy, can be parasitized by a diversity of helminths, but have rarely been subject to studies of their parasites. Therefore, this study aims to determine the prevalence of gastrointestinal helminths of road-killed grey wolves from the Piedmont region of Italy. Forty-two wol...
Anthropogenic hybridization is widely perceived as a threat to the conservation of biodiversity. Nevertheless, to date, relevant policy and management interventions are unresolved and highly convoluted. While this is due to the inherent complexity of the issue, we hereby hypothesize that a lack of agreement concerning management goals and approache...
The Eurasian lynx is of special conservation concern based on the European Union's Habitat Directive and its populations need to be maintained or restored at favourable conservation status. To evaluate lynx population status, appropriate monitoring needs to be in place. We modelled the distribution dynamics of lynx in the Alps (200 000 km2) during...
Following protection measures implemented since the 1970s, large carnivores are currently increasing in number and returning to areas from which they were absent for decades or even centuries. Monitoring programmes for these species rely extensively on non-invasive sampling and genotyping. However, attempts to connect results of such studies at lar...
p>Following protection measures implemented since the 1970s, large carnivores are currently increasing in number and returning to areas from which they were absent for decades or even centuries. Monitoring programmes for these species rely extensively on non-invasive sampling and genotyping. However, attempts to connect results of such studies at l...
Shape files of current and historical distribution maps of large carnivore species in Europe. Also available from http://datadryad.org/resource/doi:10.5061/dryad.986mp
The conservation of large carnivores is a formidable challenge for biodiversity conservation. Using a data set on the past
and current status of brown bears (Ursus arctos), Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx), gray wolves (Canis lupus), and wolverines (Gulo gulo) in European countries, we show that roughly one-third of mainland Europe hosts at least one larg...
Genetic capture–recapture (CR) analysis is a highly promising tool to estimate population parameters and monitor populations through time. However, its level of accuracy has rarely been assessed and comparisons with traditional estimates in controlled settings have rarely been performed. We used CR analysis with long-term fecal genotyping data and...
The natural return of the wolf (Canis lupus) in the western Alps of Italy and France at the beginning of the 1990's, after 70 years of absence, is an important ecological and social event. The Regione Piemonte, in the course of the Progetto Lupo Piemonte, intensively monitored the wolf population over the Piemonte territory from 1999 to 2010. We es...
Reliable estimates of population parameters and their trends are necessary for effective management and conservation actions, especially for endangered species such as wolves in most European countries. Under the Habitat Directive 92/43/CEE, all countries are required to monitor the status of their endangered populations. The ultimate goal of popul...
To assess the status of lynx we analysed lynx signs of presence within the range of the Italian Alps from 2005 to 2009. A total of 268 signs have been collected, compared to 411 signs during the previous pentad. The distribution of the confirmed signs of lynx presence is confined to three concise areas: the Northeastern Alps of Friuli VG, the Trent...
1. Wolves Canis lupus recently recolonized the Western Alps through dispersal from the Italian Apennines, representing one of several worldwide examples of large carnivores increasing in highly human-dominated landscapes. Understanding and predicting expansion of this population is important for conservation because of its direct impact on livestoc...
Reliable estimates of population parameters are necessary for effective management and conservation actions. The use of genetic
data for capture–recapture (CR) analyses has become an important tool to estimate population parameters for elusive species.
Strong emphasis has been placed on the genetic analysis of non-invasive samples, or on the CR ana...
1. Reliable estimates of population parameters are often necessary for conservation management but these are hard to obtain for elusive, rare and wide-ranging species such as wolves Canis lupus. This species has naturally recolonized parts of its former habitat in Western Europe; however, an accurate and cost-effective method to assess population t...
Spatial population dynamics of recolonizing wolves in the Western Alps
We assessed the accuracy of scat-sampling methods in relation to sources of bias (statistical independence of the data and definition of the sampling unit) and precision (sample size). We developed a method to quantify diets of predators accurately in a study of diet selection by wolves (Canis lupus) during 3 winter seasons (1999–2002) in the Weste...
Wolves in Italy strongly declined in the past and were confined south of the Alps since the turn of the last century, reduced in the 1970s to approximately 100 individuals surviving in two fragmented subpopulations in the central-southern Apennines. The Italian wolves are presently expanding in the Apennines, and started to recolonize the western A...
We used noninvasive methods to obtain genetic and demographic data on the wolf packs (Canis lupus), which are now recolonizing the Alps, a century after their eradication. DNA samples, extracted from presumed wolf scats collected in the western Italian Alps (Piemonte), were genotyped to determine species and sex by sequencing parts of the mitochond...
Projects
Projects (2)
The LIFE WOLFALPS EU (2019-2024) project is funded in the framework of the LIFE EU programme with the ultimate goal to improve wolf-
human coexistence at the wolf alpine population level, by implementing
coordinated actions over the entire Alpine ecosystem with 20 Partners of which 3 Universities, more than 100 supporters, working in areas where the wolf has been present for 20 years (Western Alps) and where the process of re-colonization has just started (Central-Eastern Alps), based on identified threats for the species and coordinated scientific approaches.
SCALP (1) uses best practise monitoring methods to evaluate the status of lynx in the Alps, (2) harmonises monitoring and data interpretation in the Alpine countries, and (3) provides expertise for GOs and NGOs. One of the main products are the SCALP criteria which distinguish between hard fact data, confirmed data and data that cannot be verified.
Since 2014 also Croatia is part of the SCALP.
