Marco Zaccaroni

University of Florence | UNIFI · Dipartimento di Biologia

The European Vertebrate Pest Management Conference (EVPMC) was founded in 1997 when the first meeting was held in York, UK. Since then, the biennial conference has been the meeting place for scientists, practitioners, regulators, NGOs and industry. After many highly successful previous meetings and an unfortunate break due to the Covid-pandemic, we...

Food contamination can be a serious concern for public health because it can be related to the severe spreading of pathogens. This is a main issue, especially in the case of fresh fruits and vegetables; indeed, they have often been associated with gastrointestinal outbreak events, due to contamination with pathogenic bacteria. However, little is kn...

The urban plan of Palermo (Sicily, Italy) has evolved throughout Punic, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, and Norman ages until it stabilized within the borders that correspond to the current historic center. During the 2012 to 2013 excavation campaign, new remains of the Arab settlement, directly implanted above the structures of the Roman age, were found....

The propagation of foreign DNA in Escherichia coli is central to molecular biology. Recent advances have dramatically expanded the ability to engineer (bacterial) cells; however, most of these techniques remain time-consuming. The aim of the present work was to explore the possibility to use the cloning-free genome editing (CFGE) approach, proposed...

The knowledge of how wolves’ movement patterns and habitat selection are affected by habituation to persons after a period of veterinary isolation, treatment and non-agonistic experience with humans is scarce. Unnatural behaviours could be transferred by imitation to members of the pack and to subsequent generations, increasing direct interaction r...

The emergence of new multidrug-resistant (MDR) pathogens brought attention to the need for new antimicrobial compounds. One of the advances in addressing the global issue of antibiotic resistance is the discovery that microorganisms residing inside medicinal plants (i.e., the endophytes) may contribute to the production of metabolites of pharmaceut...

The Formica rufa group comprises several ant species which are collectively referred to as “red wood ants” and play key roles in boreal forest ecosystems, where they are ecologically dominant and greatly influence habitat dynamics. Owing to their intense predatory activity, some of these species are used as biocontrol agents against several forest...

Seed-associated microbiota are believed to play a crucial role in seed germination, seedling establishment, and plant growth and fitness stimulation, due to the vertical transmission of a core microbiota from seeds to the next generations. It might be hypothesized that medicinal and aromatic plants could use the seeds as vectors to vertically trans...

Assessing the spatiotemporal behaviour of alien species is pivotal to designing effective management plans. Interspecific niche partitioning among ungulates is reported as a strategy to avoid direct interactions. The Mediterranean mouflon and wild boar are two ungulates introduced to Elba island for hunting and aesthetic purposes. We used intensive...

The ocellated skink (Chalcides ocellatus) is a widespread lizard, naturally distributed between the Maghreb and coastal Pakistan, with few insular populations in the Mediterranean coastal area. Some populations of this species have also been recorded in peninsular Italy, Campania and Southern Tuscany due to accidental introductions via touristic an...

The evaluation of wild boar density in a hunting district can be performed by accurate drive counts of boars within the drive areas assigned to each hunting team. Because a complete driving of all the areas is prohibitive, only a subset is driven in a hunting occasion. Results are highly dependent on the subjective choice of these areas. In this st...

The red deer Cervus elephus has been a common species in Italy until the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when its distribution range started to considerably decrease, due to gradual deforestation and hunting pressure. Afterwards, the red deer has been reintroduced to many regions of the world, including Italy. In the Italian Apennines, the Acqueri...

Multidrug-resistant pathogens represent a serious threat to human health. The inefficacy of traditional antibiotic drugs could be surmounted through the exploitation of natural bioactive compounds of which medicinal plants are a great reservoir. The finding that bacteria living inside plant tissues, (i.e., the endophytic bacterial microbiome) can i...

Red wood ants are ecologically important species in Europe that form large colonies. Their nest mounds are characterized by stable microclimatic conditions, that are favourable to the development of rich invertebrate and microbial communities. Through their respiration processes, all these inhabitants contribute to the total gas emissions of the mo...

The Sasso Fratino Integral Nature Reserve (Italy) aims to protect nature and territory. Since no anthropic activities are allowed, it represents a good model to study the bacterial community of a wild environment. The aim of this work was to characterise the cultivable and the total bacterial community of soil samples from the reserve in terms of t...

Strigiformes are affected by a substantial decline mainly caused by habitat loss and destruction, poaching, and trapping. Moreover, the increasing trend in bird trade and the growing interest in wild-caught rather than captive-bred birds are expected to encourage illegal trade. The bio-molecular investigation represents a valuable tool to track ill...

Behavioral interference and interspecific competition shape the spatiotemporal behavior of carnivores, where intra-guild predation has been recorded as a strategy to limit competition. Very often, disentangling the effect of intra-guild effects from other ecological processes is challenging, if not impossible. This work aimed to assess the spatiote...

In this chapter, reducing the high-density populations of wild boars in an Italian's Tuscany region is addressed as a measure of controlling crop damage and road accidents. The issue is usually tackled from a technical and rarely sociological point of view, making the proposed and implemented solutions less effective. The results presented in these...

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11756-021-00815-9

The assessment of spatiotemporal behaviour patterns of wild species is pivotal both for conservation and for management, especially when involving rare or elusive species, or species living in delicate ecosystems, e.g. mountains. The Siberian roe deer Capreolus pygargus is a native Asian ungulate, whose ecology is still poorly known, especially on...

In social wasps, female lifespan depends on caste and colony tasks: workers usually live a few weeks while queens as long as 1 year. Polistes dominula paper wasps infected by the strepsipteran parasite Xenos vesparum avoid all colony tasks, cluster on vegetation where parasite dispersal and mating occur, hibernate and infect the next generation of...

This study aimed to characterise the gut microbiome composition of European hares (Lepus europaeus) and its potential changes after a short-term diet modification. The high sensitivity of European hare to habitat changes makes this species a good model to analyse possible alterations in gut microbiome after the introduction of additional nourishmen...

Where allochthonous large mammals, such as the wild boars, occur in high density, human-wildlife conflicts may arise. Thus, assessing their spatio-temporal patterns is paramount to their management. We studied the wild boars on Elba island, Italy, where they have been introduced and are perceived as pests to address their occurrence and impact of f...

The European roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) is one of the most abundant ungulate species in Europe. Many studies have investigated its distribution, behavior, and ecology, but few have focused on its role as bioindicators for pollutants, particularly regarding antlers, which has been shown to indicate also deer physiology. The presence of geotherma...

Euchromatic segments of the X chromosomes of placental mammals are the most conservative elements of the karyotype, only rarely subjected to either inter- or intrachromosomal rearrangements. Here, using microdissection-derived set of region-specific probes of Terricola savii we detailed the evolutionary rearrangements found in X chromosomes in 20 v...

In this study we present a checklist of non-volant mammal species recorded during summer-fall 2018 in the southernmost Mongolian forest located in Khangain Nuruu National Park using camera trapping, live traps, and opportunistic observations. We recorded 29 mammal species belonging to 11 families and 5 orders. Intriguingly, 7 species of mustelids a...

In animal communication, acoustic signals can be used to census individuals as well as groups of individuals of the same species. The wolf (Canis lupus) is a protected species in Europe, and the study of its vocalizations may furnish information about its spatial distribution, reproductive success, and social behaviour. This study was conducted in...

The European hare (Lepus europaeus) populations are declining throughout Europe due to intensive agriculture and hunting pressure. In Italy, information on this species is biased and focused on plain terrains, while data over mountains are scant. The study aimed to fill such a research gap, providing estimates on the population density and habitat...

Juvenile social play contributes to the development of adult social and emotional skills in humans and non-human animals and is therefore a useful endpoint to study the effects of endocrine disrupters on behavior in animal models. Ethinylestradiol ( EE2), a widely produced, powerful synthetic estrogen is widespread in the environment mainly because...

Between-individual differences in coping with stress encompass neurophysiological, cognitive and behavioural reactions. The coping style model proposes two alternative response patterns to challenges that integrate these types of reactions. The “proactive strategy” combines a general fight-or-flight response and inflexibility in learning with a rel...

The study of animal diet and feeding behaviour is a fundamental tool for the illustration of the ecological role of species in the ecosystem. However, size and quality of food intake samples make it hard for researchers to describe the diet composition of many small species. In our study, we exploited genomic tools for the analysis of the diet comp...

Balancing foraging gain and predation risk is a fundamental trade-off in the life of animals. Individual strategies to acquire, process, store and use information to solve cognitive tasks are likely to affect speed and flexibility of learning, and ecologically relevant decisions regarding foraging and predation risk. Theory suggests a functional li...

Predation risk is the main factor affecting movements of mammal prey species. Here we assessed the activity patterns of a nearly endemic fossorial rodent, the Savi’s pine vole Microtus savii, in two agroecosystems in central Italy. Direct captures were carried out in cold months (December–March) with live-traps; sex and age were recorded for each c...

Satellite telemetry is an increasingly utilized technology in wildlife research, and current devices can track individual animal movements at unprecedented spatial and temporal resolutions. However, as we enter the golden age of satellite telemetry, we need an in-depth understanding of the main technological, species-specific and environmental fact...

R-code for boosted beta regression (Fix acquisition rate). (R)

Covariate partial effects on the variability of the fix acquisition rate. (PDF)

Tagged individuals per species. (PDF)

Covariate partial effects on the variability of the Overall fix success rate. (PDF)

Trends in observed data. (PDF)

Global dataset for boosted beta regressions. (CSV)

Description of data fields in S1 Data. (CSV)

Satellite telemetry articles published. (PDF)

Distribution of response variables and covariates. (PDF)

Unit purchase and operation costs. (PDF)

R-code for boosted beta regression (Overall fix success rate). (R)

Standardized data collection questionnaire. (PDF)

Satellite telemetry evaluations. (PDF)

To address whether the cerebellum takes part to spatial memory consolidation related to navigation, male Wistar rats were trained daily (4 days), in a Morris water maze to found a submerged escape platform by use of distal cues (place training test). Retention of the allocentric map was evaluated in the probe test (without platform), before the pla...

Rule violation is critical for biological conservation worldwide. Conventional questionnaires are not suitable to survey these violations and specialized questioning techniques that preserve respondents' privacy, like the forced-response RRT, have been increasingly adopted by conservationists. However, most of these approaches do not measure multin...

The parasitic insect Xenos vesparum induces noticeable behavioral and physiological changes—e.g. castration—in its female host, the paper wasp Polistes dominula: parasitized putative workers avoid any colony task and desert the colony to survive in the nearby vegetation, like future queens and males do. In this long-term observational study, we des...

Wasp collections on 4 bushes (A, B, R, J) from 2009 to 2015 (see Fig 2). (XLSX)

Mark-recapture study on bush A from 2011 to 2013 (see Fig 3). (XLSX)

Behavioral frequency/10 min of parasitized and non-parasitized wasps (see Fig 5). (XLSX)

One triungulin (length 300μm) on C. radicans flower under stereo microscope. (TIF)

The Savi’s pine vole, Microtus savii is an Italian species living in grasslands, both natural and anthropogenic (i.e. agroecosystems) where it is generally considered a pest because it may damage crops and orchards. As for most rodent pests, the extent of the damage might depend on population density and temporal food availability (e.g. Brown et al...

Management schemes for invasive mammals that may involve direct shooting of animals must possess two fundamental attributes for working: being attractive for voluntary hunters, who often replace professional gamekeepers, and being accepted by the general public, which would otherwise delegitimize agencies. Traditionally, surveys are adopted to elic...

Juvenile social play contributes to the development of adult social and emotional skills in humans and non-human animals, and is therefore a useful endpoint to study the effects of endocrine disrupters on behavior in animal models. Ethinylestradiol (EE2) is a widely produced, powerful synthetic estrogen that is widespread in the environment mainly...

In Europe invasive alien mammals are often controlled by voluntary hunters. However, no research investigated if control operations could be entirely performed by volunteers, nor how to maximize their recruitment. By using the Eastern cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus) in Central Italy as a case study, we carried out a factorial survey over a sampl...

Patterns of individual differences in cognition have been studied empirically and systematically in the last decade, but causes and consequences of this variation are still largely unclear. A recent hypothesis suggests that one predictor of individual variation in cognition is personality, and specifically that personality types are linked to cogni...

Italian freshwater ecosystems were strongly affected by biological invasions during the last few decades. Recreational angling contributed to this, through the widespread use of invasive alien species for fish restocking. To date, no research is available about the psychological and structural determinants of deliberate fish restocking in Italy. Th...

Anglers can be significant vectors for non-native species (NNS) in freshwater ecosystems, and monitoring their behaviour can be a useful way to counteract biological invasions. However, anglers may be unwilling to reveal their real behaviour in conventional surveys. In this study, the Randomised Response Technique (RRT) and the Bean Method (BM) sur...

Availability and distribution of preferred trophic resources largely influence spatial distribution and abundances of small rodents in agroecosystems. Food availability in different habitats constituting agroecosystems influences diet, population density and reproduction of small mammals. As inhabitants of anthropogenic environments, small mammals...

Vantage point counts (VPCs) are adopted to estimate the densities of roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) populations for harvest management. Thus, counts should be performed only within blocks without woodlands where it is possible to relate counts to block sizes. Alternatively, if VPCs are simply carried out on all blocks in a study region, the expecta...

Savi’s pine vole, Microtus savii, is the most widespread Italian vole species, an important rodent pest in agriculture and yet one of the least studied species. One of the reasons for this gap in knowledge is that members of this species are quite difficult to capture with standard trapping procedures, being fossorial and rarely active aboveground....

Understanding human-wildlife conflicts and monitoring their consequences, such as wildlife persecution, is crucial for biological conservation. Although most theoretical models suggest that the influence of value orientations on behavior is mediated by higher order constructs such as attitudes and norms, wildlife value orientations are widely used...

To bypass the methodological problems involved in the use of compositional data analysis by Aebischer, Robertson and Kenward (1993), the assessment of proportional habitat use is approached in a multiple-testing framework exploiting data from radio-tagged animals. The habitat use is assessed separately for each habitat type by means of the sign tes...

Ethinylestradiol (EE2), a synthetic mimic of 17β-estradiol, is widespread in the environment because of its use as a contraceptive. In mammals, recent research highlighted behavioral, physiological, and morphological effects of exposition to EE2 (this xenoestrogen). We studied if developmental exposure to environmental-like, low doses of EE2 affect...

Savi's pine vole (Microtus savii) is a fossorial rodent distributed in open areas and croplands of the Italian peninsula. Their diet is strictly herbivorous and in some contexts this species can be considered as a pest of arable crops and orchards. The aim of this study was to analyze the diet of Savi's pine vole throughout the year in a peach orch...

Background: Savi's pine vole (Microtus savii) is a rodent species of the Cricetidae family, inhabiting southern European agro-ecosystems. It is considered the main cause of rodent-attributed damage in Italy. To achieve an effective management, detailed knowledge of this species is needed. However, the available information about this species is fr...

Fossorial Savi’s pine