Giuseppe De Marchi

• PhD
• Collaborator at University of Pavia

We used GPS data-loggers, video-recordings and dummy eggs to assess whether foraging needs may force the low incubation attentiveness (< 55%) of the Crab Plover Dromas ardeola, a crab-eating wader of the Indian Ocean that nests colonially in burrows. The tidal cycle was the major determinant of the time budget and some foraging trips were more dist...

The timing of breeding in birds is a life-history trait that generally depends on food availability, but other factors may play a role, particularly in tropical areas where food availability is less seasonal than in temperate or polar areas. We studied the factors affecting the breeding season of the Crab Plover Dromas ardeola, a burrownesting colo...

A new species of cichlid fish is described from a small, endorheic lake (Lake Abaeded), situated some 30 m below sea level in the Danakil Depression of Eritrea (East Africa). Danakilia dinicolai is readily distinguished from its congener, D. franchettii, on the basis of body proportions and in the possession of markedly longer pectoral fins at all...

The gazelles of Dahlak Kebir are the only population of Nanger soemmerringii Cretzschmar, 1828 living on an island. Little is known on the biology of these animals, except that they are evidently smaller than their conspecifics living on the continent. We took advantage of a recently acquired collection of crania, probably the largest available stu...

The taxonomy of gazelles (Bovidae: Antilopinae) has been debated at length. Many of the species and subspecies were historically discriminated mostly on subtle and individually variable phenotypic differences, often on the basis of few, sometimes controversial museum specimens or captive individuals of uncertain origin. The resulting taxonomic conf...

The Horvath's rock lizard (Iberolacerta horvathi) is a rupicolous mountain species endemic of the eastern Alps and northern Dinaric range. The species has its known western limit of the distribution in the Veneto region of Italy. It is not known whether the species is really rare in Veneto or whether the area has been insufficiently surveyed. In ad...

The Danakil Depression of northeastern Africa is among the harshest environments on Earth. Yet, despite extreme aridity, this desert region hosts the endemic cichlid genus Danakilia. As currently recognized, the genus includes at least two populations of Danakilia franchettii from groundwater springs feeding Lake Afrera (Ethiopia), one population o...

The Danakil Depression in northeastern Africa represents one of the harshest arid environments on Earth, yet two genera of fishes, Danakilia (Cichlidae) and Aphanius (Cyprinodontidae), share its sparse aquatic habitats. The evolutionary history of these fishes is investigated here in the context of genetic, geological and paleoenvironmental informa...

Table S1. Principal physical and chemical parameters of water sampled at different locations in the Danakil Depression. Table S2. Summary of evolutionary models applied to Danakilia and Aphanius for phylogenetic inference.

Introduzione La Lucertola di Horvath (Iberolacerta horvathi) è una specie frigofila e litoclasifila con una distribuzione limitata a ambienti di montagna o di forra in Croazia settentrionale, Slovenia, Austria meridionale e Italia nordorientale (Province di Udine, Pordenone e Belluno). Esiste una apparente vasta lacuna distributiva di 30-40 km in l...

Riassunto. La lucertola di Horvath, Iberolacerta horvathi, è una specie endemica di ambienti montuosi dalla Croazia alla provincia di Belluno. Nel corso di ricerche sulla presenza della specie in Veneto e Trentino si sono rinvenuti alcuni esemplari di lucertola muraiola, Podarcis muralis, con anelli caudali di spessore alternato o con evidente cont...

Intermittent incubation in birds is currently interpreted as the result of trade-offs between the needs of the embryo and those of the parents. However, the low nest attendance in some species is still puzzling. We studied the Crab Plover (Dromas ardeola), a tropical burrow nesting shorebird with very low incubation constancy (less than 55%) due to...

The Red Sea is a landlocked sea that is globally significant in terms of the unique biodiversity and endemism of its marine species. In contrast, the terrestrial biodiversity on its islands is poor and mainly composed of species present also on the mainland. To profile the non-volant terrestrial mammalian fauna, we reviewed all available records in...

Being trapped is a potentially stressful experience, especially for breeding birds, so capture should be limited to target individuals and be as least harmful as possible. We describe here a modified legnoose trap that we developed for the burrow nesting Crab-plover (Dromas ardeola). Similar to other commonly used devices, it consists of monofilame...

A popularized version of the article published on Biological Journal of the Linnean Society about the dwarf Soemmerring's Gazelles (Nanger soemmerringii) of Dahlak Kebir island (Eritrea, NE Africa).

The present study describes the breeding biology of Crab Plovers (Dromas ardeola), a little-known shorebird species nesting on Nakhilu and Omol-Karam Islands located in the Nakhilu Marine National Park in the northern Persian Gulf, Iran. This study occurred during the breeding seasons of 2009–2011. Colonies had between 500–1,500 nests and were loca...

hanno vissuto molti anni in Eritrea lavorando come insegnanti pres-so il Liceo Marconi di Asmara. Hanno contribuito alla realizzazione di molte opere sull'Eritrea, tra cui Asmara Style -1997, Asmara CD-Rom -1999, Dahlak. Perle di corallo del Mar Rosso -2004, Eritrea on The Road -2005, Isola Verde -Green Island – 2006, Wings over the Red Sea. The Bi...

Five species new for Eritrea are documented. Four of these, Red-footed Booby Sula sula, Great Cormorant Phalacrocorax carbo, African Jacana Actophilornis africanus and Steppe Gull Larus (fuscus) barabensis, were observed during surveys of offshore islands and the coast of Eritrea. A fifth record concerns a specimen of Brown-throated Wattle-eye Plat...

Determining the sex of Crab Plovers (Dromas ardeola) based on morphology has, hitherto, proven difficult. Here, six morphological traits (head-bill length, bill length, bill depth, wing chord, tarsus length and weight) of 39 molecularly or behaviorally sexed breeding Crab Plovers were compared in order to find a reliable morphometric way to determi...

The Crab Plover (Dromas ardeola) is a little-known shorebird that breeds colonially in self-dug burrows on islands in the north-western Indian Ocean. To test whether the "nest site limitation" hypothesis could satisfactorily explain the high nest density in this species, 21 colonies were studied in Eritrea from 2002 to 2009. The hypothesis was fals...

The Red Sea is a long and narrow sea basin directed north-south and demarcating the African and Arabian tectonic plates. The sea stretches in the desert landscape bordering its shores in one of the most arid and hot areas of the World. The geological history, the climate and the communication with the Indian Ocean through the strait of Bab el Mande...

We assess the current status of breeding seabirds and waterbirds on the still mostly unpopulated Eritrean islands, many of which had never previously been visited by ornithologists. In 2001–07 we surveyed 325 islands (93% of the total), of which 210 were found to harbour 21 breeding species of seabirds and waterbirds. We counted c.150,000 breeding...

We describe an unknown mode of solar-assisted egg development in the crab plover Dromas ardeola, a shorebird that breeds in self-excavated burrows. The insulating properties of the nest burrow and the intense solar radiation allowed egg development at near-optimal temperature (35.2°C±0.2) and humidity (60.2%±4.4), allowing a very low incubation att...

We describe 30 new nesting sites of the Crab Plover Dromas ardeola, the main breeding grounds of which were largely unknown, and for which fewer than 30 colonies had been confirmed since 1970. Our survey included 90 islands, 53% of those existing, in the Dahlak and Howakil archipelagoes, and off the coast of central Eritrea. Colony size varied betw...

The Crab Plover (Dromas ardeola) is confirmed to breed in Eritrea.