About
214
Publications
91,104
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
3,777
Citations
Introduction
Additional affiliations
January 2010 - present
Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza"
January 2006 - December 2010
Publications
Publications (214)
The high leaf morphological variability of European white oaks is largely documented in the botanical literature, and several papers have been published in the last two decades focusing on inter- and intraspecific leaf phenotypic plasticity. Studies involving landmark-based geometric morphometrics proved to be useful in highlighting relationships b...
Amphibian populations are experiencing a global significant decline due to habitat loss, climate change, disease outbreaks and last but not least, interaction with alien species and/or their parasites. The Apennine yellow-bellied toad ( Bombina variegata pachypus (Bonaparte, 1838)) is endemic to the Italian Peninsula. This subspecies, like many oth...
The Eurasian otter is a wide-ranging semi-aquatic mammal that underwent a significant population decline in the last century, leading to local extinctions, reduction and fragmentation of populations. The individuals of populations exposed to both external and internal stress may present the inability to produce a specific developmental outcome, gen...
Monitoring of medium- and large-sized terrestrial mammal species in 4 Italian cities: sampling design and preliminary results from Campobasso.
Presentation of the methods for a long-term monitoring of medium- and large-sized mammals in different italian urban areas. This work is carried on in the NBFC framework, Spoke Urban.
Coastal ecosystems, encompassing land and marine environments and hosting substantial biodiversity, are among the most threatened worldwide. The European Habitats Directive prioritises coastal habitats and species, requiring legislative, direct protection, monitoring, and informational measures. Accurate habitat and species monitoring is crucial to...
1. A precise framework of species occurrence and distribution trends is crucial for conservation measures. Traditional survey methods are often labour-intensive and time-consuming, and they can be ineffective in detecting the presence of rare and elusive taxa, especially in harsh environments.
2. The effectiveness and feasibility of an environment...
Once widespread across the Italian peninsula, the Eurasian otter drastically declined in the ’70s of the last century, and by the onset of this century its distribution was limited to few river basins of Southern Italy. In recent years a slow but constant re-expansion in its former extent of occurrence has been documented in different portions of t...
Sexual dimorphism is a very common strategy in polygamous mammals. In mustelids, sexual size dimorphism (SSD) is present in several species, while sexual shape dimorphism (SShD) is not as common. The Eurasian otter is a semiaquatic mustelid, exclusively feeding on aquatic prey, mainly fish, amphibians, and crustaceans. It is well-known that male ot...
Climate and land use change can affect biodiversity in different ways, e.g., determining habitat loss, altering reproduction periods or disrupting biotic interactions. Here, we investigate the effects of climate and land use change on the spatial distribution of two semi-aquatic mammals, the Pyrenean desman (Galemys pyrenaicus) and the Eurasian ott...
Assessing landscape connectivity allows defining the degree to which the landscape facilitates or impedes the movement of a species between resource patches. In this phase of climate change and biodiversity crisis, maintaining landscape connectivity by restoring and protecting connecting areas and corridors is a key strategy to ensure the survival...
Stable isotope analysis of animal tissue samples is increasingly used to study the trophic ecology of target species. The isotopic signatures respond to the type of diet, but also to the environmental conditions of their habitat. In the case of omnivorous, seasonal or opportunistic feeding species, the interpretation of isotopic values is more comp...
Otters are semi-aquatic mammals specialized in feeding on aquatic prey. The Eurasian otter Lutra lutra is the most widely distributed otter species. Despite a low degree of genetic variation across its European range, the population from Great Britain exhibits distinct genetic structuring. We examined 43 skulls of adult Eurasian otters belonging to...
Biological significance of scat marking by otters has been a controversial subject among scientists. Using multiyear (2014-2017) data of otter spraint counts in South Korea, this study aimed to test whether the observed pattern of spraint presence/absence is driven by detection error and if/how scat counts can be a proxy for otter abundance at the...
Loy, A., Kranz, A., Oleynikov, A., Roos, A., Savage, M. & Duplaix, N. 2022. Lutra lutra (amended version of 2021 assessment). https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2022-2.RLTS.T12419A218069689.en. Accessed on 30 December 2023.
The Eurasian otter is endangered in Italy, only surviving in southern river basins. The spatial and social structure of a population living at the border of the current range was explored through a noninvasive genetic study along 174 km of the Sangro river. Sampling was conducted in 2011 and 2012, collecting spraints and anal jellies at 62 marking...
Key message
Leaf shape in European beech provenances varies geographically, with narrower and longer lamina observed in southern provenances, indicating a direct selection favoring leaf shape that likely safeguards trees performances under less favorable growing conditions.
AbstractSpatial and environmental patterns of European beech (Fagus sylvati...
Mediterranean landscapes constitute a biodiversity hotspot where species distribution and composition have been shaped by a long history of traditional land use. In this work, we investigated the effects of landscape patterns on community composition and the functional, morphological, and ecological traits of 21 small mammal species in the Mediterr...
The assessment of the occurrence of rare and endangered species in freshwater environments is crucial for ecological studies and conservation issues, but it can be time-consuming and challenging in harsh environments. Detecting DNA traces from the environment (environmental DNA, eDNA) can provide innovative and reliable solutions for the monitoring...
Recognizing the imperative to evaluate species recovery and conservation impact, in 2012 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) called for development of a “Green List of Species” (now the IUCN Green Status of Species). A draft Green Status framework for assessing species’ progress toward recovery, published in 2018, proposed 2 s...
Aim
Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment (CCVA) prescribes the quantification of species vulnerability based on three components: sensitivity, adaptive capacity and exposure. Such assessments should be performed through combined approaches that integrate trait‐based elements (e.g., measures of species sensitivity such as niche width) with correl...
When an alien species is introduced in a new area, the new population may be genetically and phenotypically different from the parent population because of the population bottleneck, increased inbreeding rate and adaptation to the new environment. In this study we investigated the variation in shape and size of the mandible among and within three p...
When an alien species is introduced in a new area, the new population may be genetically and phenotypically different from the parent population because of the population bottleneck, increased inbreeding rate and adaptation to the new environment. In this study we investigated the variation in shape and size of the mandible among and within three p...
We explored fluctuating asymmetry (FA) and morphological integration (MI) in the skull of the small, highly inbred and divergent Apennine bear ( Ursus arctos marsicanus ), to explore its uniqueness and investigate any potential effects of inbreeding depression. We used 3D geometric morphometrics contrasting Apennine bears with other two large outbr...
I am delighted to launch a new open access journal devoted to ex situ research and conservation of our planet’s biodiversity [...]
The European Union (EU) has recently adopted a regulation on invasive alien species that foresees the possibility of developing lists of species of National Concern. We developed a prioritisation process for alien mammals already established in Italy, but not yet included in the EU list (n = 6 species) and a systematic horizon-scanning procedure to...
Atti della giornata di studio sull'Orso bruno marsicano - Bologna 20 ottobre 2018
Aim
Roads impact wildlife in different ways, among which road mortality has been the most studied. Budgets in conservation biology are usually small, and macroecological approaches have been employed in recent years as the first steps towards guiding management. Carnivores are particularly vulnerable to mortality on roads due to their elevated ecol...
Individual recognition of wild animals is a fundamental tool to acquire information about the structure and dynamics of animal populations. Recently, individual identification from camera trapping has been successfully applied to Capture-Mark- Recapture (CMR) studies in various taxa. We collected 281 photos of 48 specimens of Western Polecat (Muste...
The validity of using spraint (otter faeces) density for population monitoring has been debated for more than 30 years. In this study, we investigated endangered Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra) spraint occurrence and densities at large scales (over 23,800 km 2 , a quarter of South Korea) over three years (2014-2016). To clarify the spatial heterogenei...
Background:
Understanding the mechanisms promoting or constraining morphological diversification within clades is a central topic in evolutionary biology. Ecological transitions are of particular interest because of their influence upon the selective forces and factors involved in phenotypic evolution. Here we focused on the humerus and mandibles...
Checklists represent a basic tool for conservation and management of regional faunas. However, our knowledge on species composition in a territory changes over time due to species movements across borders, extinctions, introductions, as well as to new taxonomic evidence. We aimed to provide the most updated data on native and non-native species of...
• The common dolphin (Delphinus delphis) has a worldwide distribution, from tropical to temperate seas and oceans. Because of the high degree of geographic variation, the taxonomy of the species is still uncertain.
• Skulls from 195 museum specimens from nine marine areas were examined using two‐ and three‐dimensional geometric morphometrics. Size...
Collisions with vehicles represent the main conflict between infrastructures and wildlife, causing damages to both humans and animals. As to the latter, road mortality is a growing phenomenon and the largest single cause of death for many vertebrates. When focusing on endangered species, the Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra) is among the most vulnerable...
Preserving species within protected areas (PAs) does not guarantee adequate levels of protection if not coupled with conservation of functional connectivity for a target species. We propose an analytical framework to assess the effectiveness of PAs in preserving habitat and functional connectivity for mobile vertebrates. We implemented it in centra...
Supplementary resources of the article: Habitat suitability vs landscape connectivity determining road-kill risk at a regional scale: a case study on European badger (Meles meles).
Aim
The establishment and spread of invasive alien species may be influenced by several mutually interacting factors, whose understanding is paramount to develop effective biosecurity policies. However, studies focused on modelling spatially explicit patterns of future invasion risk have so far focused on species response to climate change impacts,...
Collisions between wildlife and vehicles represent the main conflict between infrastructures and ecosystems. Road mortality is the largest single cause of death for many vertebrates, representing a growing phenomenon of remarkable dimension. Most studies in road ecology investigated spatial roadkill patterns, showing that roadkill probability is of...
The prevailing method for estimating the potential impact of future climate change on biological communities is to stack binary predictions from species distribution models (binary stacked species distribution models, bS-SDM). However, it has been argued that bS-SDM may overestimate species richness and, hence, community composition. Alternative ap...
The Eurasian otter ( Lutra lutra ) is among the most endangered mammals in Italy, its population being isolated and genetically distinct from other European populations. Yet, its ecology and behavior are largely unknown in Italy, preventing its much-needed effective conservation. We radio-tracked one male and one female otter daily in Southern Ital...
Following a severe decline in Italy in the second half of the last century, the Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra) has been confined in the southern part of the peninsula with two isolated nuclei. Similar to other European populations, a slow recovery of the two disjointed populations started in the 90s. Filling the range gap was set as a main objective...
Biodiversity loss and habitat degradation are big challenges to be tackled by conservation planning since their effects on both ecological and social-economic systems are remarkably detrimental. Efforts to limit anthropogenic impacts on species and habitats need to be assisted by tools for biodiversity monitoring. Effective monitoring tools could h...
The use of database technologies as a tool for implementing data for quantitative
ecological studies and biodiversity conservation planning has recently attracted the attention of the
biological community. Despite the fact that the number of biodiversity data sets is quickly rising,
online databases of small mammals are still scarce, especially for...
Most research on small mammal decline focused on limited spatial and temporal scales, especially for the Mediterranean region.
Landscape fragmentation and degradation are considered the main drivers of biodiversity loss, yet the synergetic effect of landscape change and biotic interactions on small mammal assemblages
have been poorly investigated....
Quantification of niche overlap represents an important topic in several aspects of ecology and conservation biology, although it could be potentially affected by imperfect detection, i.e., failure to detect a species at occupied sites. We investigate the effect of imperfect detection on niche overlap quan-tification in two arboreal rodents, the ed...
The peregrine falcon has shown an increasing tendency to replace the lanner falcon at its breeding sites in the Mediterranean area. This has been suggested as the main cause of the reduction in the distribution of the lanner observed in central Italy. We focused on these two falcon species to disentangle the relative contribution of habitat filteri...
Climate change impact on species is commonly assessed by predicting species' range change, a measure of a species' extrinsic exposure. However, this is only one dimension of species' vulnerability to climate change. Spatial arrangement of suitable habitats (e.g., fragmentation), their degree of protection or human disturbance, as well as species' i...
The adaptation to a particular function could directly influence the morphological evolution of an anatomical structure as well as its rates. The humeral morphology of moles (subfamily Talpinae) is highly modified in response to intense burrowing and fully fossorial lifestyle. However, little is known of the evolutionary pathways that marked its di...
Phenotypic changes in the mammalian mandible can occur at different spatial and temporal scales. We investigated mandibular size and shape variation in three extant closely related dolphins (Cetacea, Odontoceti): Tursiops truncatus, Stenella coeruleoalba and Delphinus delphis in order to test the hypothesis that similar phenotypic changes occur acr...
The aim of this study was to describe the pattern of morphological variation of the bottlenose dolphin in the Mediterranean Sea and to verify the existence of sub-populations, based on differences in cranial morphology investigated through a Geometric Morphometric (GM) approach.
We investigated the spatial relationships among three phylogenetically related and ecologically convergent moles in Italy: Talpa europaea, Talpa romana and Talpa caeca. The spatial niche of each species was described through environmental predictors of climate, soil moisture and topography. Niche overlap between each species pair was quantified, an...
In Italy Red Kite breeding population estimate is 425-525 pairs concentrated mainly in Basilicata, Abruzzo and Molise (82%). Small populations are also present in Calabria, Apulia, Sicily, Lazio, Campania, Tuscany and Marche. In new Italian Red List of breeding birds, its status improved from Endangered to Vulnerable. Bibliographic research was car...
Aim
We sought to assess different megafaunal species responses to the intense climatic changes that characterized the end of the Quaternary.
Location
Eurasia.
Methods
We used species distribution modelling, niche overlap tests and co‐occurrence analysis to model climatic niche evolution and change in six different megafauna species, including thr...
The family Ursidae is currently one of the taxonomic groups with the lowest number of species among Carnivora. Extant bear species exhibit broad ecological adaptations both at inter- and intraspecific level, and taxonomic issues within this family remain unresolved (i.e., the number of recognizable subspecies). Here, we investigate a sample of bear...
La IV Conferenza del Centro Studi per le Reti Ecologiche “Road Ecology experiences: research, planning and design for the ecological sustainability of infrastructures” organizzata dal Centro Studi per le Reti Ecologiche della Riserva Naturale Regionale Monte Genzana Alto Gizio, dal Comune di Pettorano sul Gizio (AQ) e Legambiente Abruzzo Onlus, vuo...
The growing numbers of road infrastructure have a great impact on biodiversity, such as habitat loss, degradation, fragmentation and roads impacts. The European polecat (Mustela putorius) is a small-sized, elusive and poorly studied carnivore that is often fund along roads. We collected 223 records of polecat road casualties in Italy and analysed t...
La lontra eurasiatica (Lutra lutra) è uno dei mammiferi più minacciati dell’italia, classificata come en
nell’ultima lista rossa iucn dei vertebrati italiani (1). l’areale è disgiunto in due porzioni, una
settentrionale in Abruzzo e Molise ed una meridionale in campania, Basilicata e calabria (2). l’ultima
stima della dimensione delle popolazioni p...
Feeding adaptation, social behaviour, and interspecific interactions related to sexual dimorphism and allometric growth are particularly challenging to be investigated in the high sexual monomorphic Delphinidae. We used geometric morphometrics to extensively explore sexual dimorphism and ontogenetic allometry of different projections of the skull a...
Small mammal communities in European forests stresses their potential use as bioin- dicators. However, to effectively study the role of small mammals as biondicators, an accurate assessment of species detection is crucial, as sampling biases can misrepresent abundance and niche estimates. We explored detection probability and niche overlap in two E...