Masseti Marco

University of Florence | UNIFI · Dipartimento di Biologia

Proceedings of "Fauna 2020", the Italian conference on the European wildcat dedicated to the memory of Prof. Bernardino Ragni

Marettimo island is the furthest of the Aegadian archipelago from the coast of northwestern Sicily. Nevertheless, the presence of continental and non-endemic mammals on the island has been documented since the Mesolithic period. Over the course of historical times the introduction of mammals on the small island has continued without any apparent so...

The Dama dama dama population of the island of Rhodes has an important conservation significance because of its unique genetic characters. Currently, many are the factors that threaten its survival. Aim of this paper is to provide the first data on the spatio-temporal co-occurrence between the only free-ranging Greek population of common fallow dee...

From at least the Iron Age up to the Hellenistic period, the Etruscan culture flourished in a large portion of the Italian peninsula, extending from the Po delta and the eastern Alps in the north to Campania in the south. It was characterised by a magnificent and original artistic production that took its inspiration from aspects of the natural env...

Genetic data are crucial for making inferences about the evolutionary history of species and deriving guidelines for conservation strategies. In conservation genetics studies, each step should be critically evaluated, from sampling strategy to data quality assessment and analytical methods: potential issues and biases should be considered, reproduc...

The genus Castor first appeared in the Palaearctic region during the Late Miocene, while the current species, Castor fiber, is widely accepted to have emerged in the Early Pleistocene. In the Last Glacial Maximum (Late Pleistocene), the beaver disappeared from most of the Western Palaearctic, only surviving in a few relic areas including the south-...

Several authors stated that a “goats from the - not better identified - kingdom of Montenegro” were imported by king Vittorio Emanuele III on the small Tyrrhenian island of Montecristo at the end of the 19 th century, with the aim of restocking the local big game. The Italian king had very close relations with this Balkan state and, in 1896, Montec...

1. Two species of chamois currently live in Italy: Rupicapra rupicapra, with the subspecies Rupicapra rupicapra rupicapra, the Alpine chamois, and Rupicapra pyrenaica, with the subspecies Rupicapra pyrenaica ornata, the Apennine chamois. 2. Late Pleistocene and Holocene remains of chamois are numerous, but those attributable with reasonable certain...

Holocene persistence of Equus hydruntinus Regalia, 1907 in Italy - Equus hydruntynus is an extinct species typical of the Late Pleistocene of southern Europe. It made its first appearance in the European fossil horizons of the late Middle Pleistocene (about 350 ky BP). In Italy its oldest occurrence is referred to the terminal part of the Middle P...

The abundance of migratory birds on Lampedusa (Sicilian Channel, Italy) has been documented since the fifteenth century, but during the nineteenth century, this small island was particularly noted for the regular presence of cranes. Official reports documented the occurrence of these birds from as far back as the eighteenth century, recording the p...

Southern Italy has a long history of human occupation and passage of different cultures since the Early Holocene. Repeated, ancient introductions of pigs in several geographic areas in Europe make it difficult to understand pig translocation and domestication in Italy. The archeozoological record may provide fundamental information on this, hence s...

Southern Italy has a long history of human occupation and passage of different cultures since the Early Holocene. Repeated, ancient introductions of pigs in several geographic areas in Europe make it difficult to understand pig translocation and domestication in Italy. The archeozoological record may provide fundamental information on this, hence s...

The wild boar, Sus scrofa, is an important game species widely distributed in Eurasia. Whereas the genetic variability of most European wild boar populations is well known, the status of wild boar living in Southern Italy is not as clear. We evaluated the present and past genetic diversity (D-loop, mtDNA) of the South Italian population, comparing...

In 1513 the famous Turkish navigator, geographer and cartographer, the admiral Pîrî Reis, drew a large planisphere showing the entire known world of the time. Today only a fragment of this work remains, conserved at the Topkapi Sarayi Museum in Istanbul (Turkey) and referred to as the Carte de l'Atlantique. This map represents one of the most contr...

Basmafasal is a suburb of the town of Deir ez-Zor, located in that part of northern Syrian Mesopotamia known as the Jazira (al-Jazirah), which lies in between the Euphrates and Khabur rivers. During the second half of the 1980s, a collection of mounted mammals, birds and reptiles was made by a local man, Abu Rabic, with the aim of representing the...

European Roe Deer, Capreolus capreolus (Linnaeus, 1758) IUCN Assessment Capreolus capreolus. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2016: e.T42395A22161386.

Located near to the village of Azraq, in eastern Jordan, the archaeological site of Qasr al-Amra was built in the early Umayyad period, for the caliph Al-Walid I. It is especially famous for the wall paintings that have survived on the interior ceilings and walls, showing, among other subjects, hunting scenes and several zoomorphic figures. Many of...

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...

On the small island of Montecristo, in the Tuscan archipelago (Northern Tyrrhenian Sea, Italy), a wild goat population, Capra aegagrus Erxleben, 1777, of very ancient origin continues to display the phenotypic patterns of its wild ancestors, despite the fact that, in recent decades, questionable management by the authorities in charge of its protec...

Two mounted skins of squirrels allegedly originating from the Mariana islands, Micronesia (south western Pacific Ocean) are held in the collections of the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden. They may have been collected in the course of a French scientific expedition, commanded by Louis-Claude De Saulses de Freycinet, in 1819. This paper discuss...

We examine the evidence for the presence of red deer from the Haemus peninsula and the Aegean

A highly debated question that engages paleontologists, zoogeographers, and zoologists is how terrestrial mammals colonize islands. The question’s oversimplification and the subjective and partial responses to it have led to reductionist models. Insular faunas and fossil assemblages result from a complex interaction of geological, biological (in a...

Cave lions (Panthera spelaea), which spread throughout Western Europe for several thousand years, disappeared approximately 14 000–14 500 years ago. They were supposedly replaced by modern lions (Panthera leo) approximately 8000 years ago. Modern lions reached the steppes of Ukraine and Hungary, without penetrating the forests of Central Europe. Th...

This paper deals with the surviving ornithological stuffed specimens from the former Libyan Museum of Natural History, set up in Tripoli in 1936, in the extant Assaray Al-hamra Museums. The aim of this note is to provide a checklist of the stuffed birds still on display in the cases, while taking the opportunity to furnish a range of additional inf...

Comparisons of a morphological, eco-ethological and palaeontological nature conducted several decades ago enabled the recognition of two distinct species of chamois: the Alpine chamois, Rupicapra rupicapra, and that of the Pyrenees, Rupicapra pyrenaica, which has survived up to the present in Italy only within the boundaries of the Abruzzo National...

The second part of the last glacial coincided with the progressive rarefaction and subsequent disappearance of several carnivores of large dimensions from the Italian faunistic horizons, and in particular from Tuscany. The animals that disappeared included the dhole, the cave bear, the spotted hyaena, the wolverine, the leopard, and the lion. Some...

Comparisons of a morphological, eco-ethological and palaeontological nature conducted several decades ago enabled the recognition of two distinct species of chamois: the Alpine chamois, Rupicapra rupicapra, and that of the Pyrenees, Rupicapra pyrenaica, which has survived up to the present in Italy only within the boundaries of the Abruzzo National...

For some time there has been debate regarding whether the asp viper, Vipera aspis (Linnaeus, 1758), belonged to the original fauna of the small island of montecristo, Northern tyrrhenian sea (tuscan archipelago, italy). it has long been believed that the asp viper population of this island is made up of the subspecies Vipera aspis hugyi schinz, 183...

There is clear evidence for the introduction of Old World mammals to the West Indies from the very first human appearance in the region. The mammals concerned were several species of African, Eurasian and Oriental origin, including monkeys, lagomorphs, carnivores, deer, commensal and non-commensal rodents, and possibly hedgehogs. Starting with the...

Le porc-épic à crête, Hystrix cristata L., 1758, en Italie Cet article met en évidence l'introduction du porc-épic à crête (Hystrix cristata L., 1758) en Italie et avance des hypothèses au sujet de la chronologie et des modalités de cette insertion. La répartition actuelle du porc-épic à crête en dehors de l'Afrique est limitée à la Sicile et à la...

This paper is aimed at verifying the significance of the zoomorphic images represented in the 12th century picture of the Genoard, the “earthly paradise”, of Palermo (Sicily) contained in an illumination in the Liber ad honorem Augusti by Pietro da Eboli, 12th century A.D. (Berne, Burgerbibliothek, Codex 120). Based on analyses of the literary and...

In this paper the evidence for the introduction of the crested porcupine (Hystrix cristata L. 1758) in Italy is reviewed and hypotheses concerning the timing and modalities of this event are brought forward. The crested porcupine current distribution outside Africa is limited to Sicily and the Italian Peninsula. Palaeontological data indicate that...

The aim of the present work is to examine the recent Holocene history of Libyan mammals by integrating data from archaeoozology, prehistoric iconography, historical and recent observations, in order to offer a starting point for future studies. The available data document the past diffusion of species – belonging to both Palaearctic and Afrotropica...

Around the end of the second decade of the sixteenth century, in the Villa Medici of Poggio a Caiano in the vicinity of Florence, the Florentine artist Andrea del Sarto painted a great fresco, commissioned by Pope Leo X in honour of his late father, Lorenzo de' Medici. This fresco contains one of the earliest representations in Europe of a living S...

The fossil and subfossil mammal scenario of the oceanic islands of Macaronesia - the Azores, Madeira, and the Savage Islands (Portugal), the Canary Islands (Spain) and Cape Verde - is disconcertingly scant, consisting almost exclusively of the same taxonomic groups characterised by a homogeneous composition of species. The very few endemites can be...

The Farasan archipelago is located in the southern Red Sea, off the south-western coast of Saudi Arabia. Around the beginning of the 1990s, these islands were designated as a marine and terrestrial reserve, mainly for the protection of the Farasan gazelle, which is the only wild ungulate present on the archipelago. As far as is presently known, oth...

The National Park of Termessos, Southern Turkey, is one of the Turkey’s biggest national park not only with its archeological richness but also with its great natural wild life. We provided a checklist of the mammalian fauna of the park on the base of direct observations, interviews and a comparative analysis of the available literature. Sixteen sp...

The aim of this research is to outline the local occurrence and recent distribution of carnivores in Syria (Syrian Arab Republic) in order to offer a starting point for future studies. The species of large dimensions, such as the Asiatic lion, the Caspian tiger, the Asiatic cheetah, and the Syrian brown bear, became extinct in historical times, the...

This note comments on a find of the european mongoose (Herpestes Ichneumon L., 1758) from a cistern of punie age on the island of Sant'Antioco (Sardinia, Italy) that antedates a recently radiocarbon dated find of Almoravid-Almohad age at the site of Cueva de Nerja (Málaga, Spain) by close to two millennia.

There is possibly no other location in the world which has been so intensively influenced by human activity over a prolonged period as the Mediterranean. Virtually no ecosystems have been left untouched. Since prehistory, the human settlers of the Mediterranean islands brought about a radical turnover between ancient and modern mammalian faunas, in...

Cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) and caracals (Caracal caracal) have been used for hunting in the Near and the Middle East since antiquity. In Iran and India the caracal was mainly trained for hunting birds, but in Europe this practice was rare, and is documented only in southern Italy and Sicily by iconographic evidence as far back as the eleventh and...

ABSTRACT • Populations of wild goats that can be referred to as phenotypes of the pasang, or Bezoar goat, or wild goat Capra aegagrus Erxleben, 1777, still occur on several of the Mediterranean and Eastern Atlantic islands. Other populations became extinct not many decades ago. • Fossil evidence for the natural spread of the wild goat to any of the...

The Western Palaearctic is traditionally regarded as a zoogeographical unit which is lacking in primatological fauna. The representatives of this taxonomic group which has been documented within its boundary can be referred to the genera Macaca, Papio, and Chlorocebus, and possibly also to Erythrocebus and Galago. The data for the present research...

A b s t r a c t . Among the extant non-flying terrestrial mammals of the Mediterranean islands, we can find very few of the endemic elements that characterised the late Quaternary faunas. Instead, the existing faunas are almost exclusively dominated by continental taxa, as a rule regionally specific, related to species on the nearest mainland, and...

Per milioni di anni l'uomo ed i suoi antenati hanno vissuto in rapporto con gli animali, se ne sono alimentati e li hanno sfruttati in vario modo: come fonte di cibo, di vestiario o di compagnia, ma anche per il trasporto di genti, di beni materiali o di eserciti. La nostra sopravvivenza è sempre dipesa dagli animali domestici, i quali hanno contri...

sailing the wine-dark sea to men of alien language…" (Homer, The Odyssey, I: 183) When there were no geographical maps, when the marine routes were still uncertain, the ships unsafe and the oceans wild and dangerous, travelling was an epic endeavour. The explorers of antiquity almost always departed without knowing exactly where they were going, ge...

The Grotta degli Animali of the Villa Medici di Castello, Florence, Italy, houses a varied range of life-size mammals in polychrome marble, perhaps created by Cosimo Fancelli around 1555, on a model by Baccio Bandinelli. This paper describes and identifies the mammalian species portrayed, bearing in mind, however, the possible influence of an icono...

The European fallow deer (Dama dama dama) is one of the most widespread cervids, and its distribution has been heavily affected by man. At present, only one wild autochthonous population is reputed to survive in Anatolia, but its census size is dramatically decreasing. This means that a significant portion of the ancestral genetic diversity of this...

strong>Abstract In the sand dune (tombolo), named “Bosco Isola”, which separates the lagoon of Lesina (Province of Foggia, Apulia, southern Italy) from the Adriatic Gulf, traditional records confirm the existence since ancient times of a population of red deer, Cervus elaphus L., 1758. These animals originated very likely from one of the hunting p...

The current Mediterranean fauna is a result of the interactions of diverse factors, primarily the multiple biogeographical origin of the species, Quaternary climatic changes (which produced a repeated turnover of biota) and Late Pleistocene-Holocene human-induced habitat modifications, including hunting and Holocene introductions of a variety of al...

Recent archaeological excavations of the cave of Cyclops, located in the southern cliffs of the islet of Youra (northern Sporades, Greece) have provided evidence of continuous human activity from the Mesolithic Period (10000–6800 BC) up to the beginning of the Final Neolithic (4600/ 4500–3300/3200 BC). The results of the investigation of its Mesoli...

The Neolithic Revolution began 11,000 years ago in the Near East and preceded a westward migration into Europe of distinctive cultural groups and their agricultural economies, including domesticated animals and plants. Despite decades of research, no consensus has emerged about the extent of admixture between the indigenous and exotic populations o...

The importation from Asia Minor to the central and western Mediterranean of ideas and of biological and material elements was merely a repetition of a practice which had been going on for centuries - if not for millennia - whenever political and economical conditions were favourable. Typical Anatolian faunal elements, so characteristic of the Near-...

During a field study carried out in the Tunisian National Park of El Feidja (Khroumiria region, NW Tunisia) in May 2000, we captured four species of bats never previously recorded in this area: the Mediterranean horseshoe bat Rhinolophus euryale, the greater horseshoe bat R. ferrumequinum, the Mehely's horseshoe bat R. mehelyi and the Geoffroy's ba...

We investigated the origins of the fallow deer (Dama dama dama) of Rhodes by both morphological and molecular means. Our results show that these deer have homogeneous phenotypic patterns. All specimens fell within the common colour coat variety typical of the wild form. The Rhodian deer appear to be rather small, especially when compared with speci...

The term “anthropochorous” can be referred to the fauna which has populations or nuclei of individuals brought to and diffused in geographical areas by the direct or indirect action of humans. This definition therefore implicates the role of humans, either conscious or unconscious, in the alteration of the areas of distribution of the fauna. Hence,...

Abstract In the Mediterranean Region, squirrels and dormice of natural and anthropochorous occurrence are today represented by 7 taxa on each. Palaeontological evidence suggests that Upper Pleistocene dispersal of the representatives of the Gliridae family seems to have occurred only on the islands of the western Mediterranean basin, whereas squirr...

Abstract Suncus etruscus (Savi, 1822) (Mammalia, Soricidae) in the island of Lipari (Eolian Archipelago, southern Tirrenian sea, Italy) The pygmy white-toothed shrew, Suncus etruscus (Savi, 1822), is recorded for the first time for the island of Lipari. Eight specimens (3 males and 5 females) were found during 2002-03 in the surroundings of the mai...

One amphibian and six reptile species are reported for the first time from the following islands of SW Turkey: Domuz (Typhlops vermicularis), Tersane (Typhlops vermicularis), Yassica (Cyrtopodion kotschyi), Göcek (Hierophis jugularis), and Delikli (Ablepharus kitaibelii), in the Göcek-Fethiye Bay; Kameriye (Bufo viridis and Eirenes modestus), locat...

Most of the wild ungulates which inhabited the Syrian territories (Syrian Arab Republic) has been exterminated in historical times. At present, the Wild Boar, Sus scrofa, the Roe Deer, Capreolus capreolus, and two or possibly three species of gazelle, Gazella subgutturosa, G. dorcas, and G. gazella, are the only survivors from a rich fauna of ungul...

Nel Mediterraneo i carnivori sono stati raramente oggetto di studi di carattere ecologico, pur essendo diffusi su numerose isole. Inoltre i pochi lavori attualmente disponibili, in particolare quelli relativi alle loro abitudini alimentari, si basano su campioni di ridotte dimensioni e/o si riferiscono a periodi di campionamento molto brevi. Il pre...

Come per la maggior parte degli altri paesi europei, anche l'attuale composizione delle specie a mammiferi italiane si prefigura in gran parte come il risultato della plurima e prolungata azione antropica condotta sull'ambiente naturale. Questa, avviatasi alcuni millenni or sono, condiziona oggi più che mai la ridefinizione degli equilibr...

During the nineteenth century, scientific literature and official reports recorded the occurrence of a population of red deer, Cervus elaphus, on the island of Lampedusa (Pelagian Archipelago, Italy). Osteological specimens collected by the zoologist Enrico Hillier Giglioli towards the end of the century confirmed these references. Since cervids ar...

Genetic diversity and differentiation were assessed in 12 populations of roe deer, Capreolus capreolus, from Italy, through examination of restriction fragment length polymorphism of two segments in the mitochondrial genome, the D‐loop and NADH dehydrogenase 1, and analysis of 13 microsatellite loci. Both methods yielded concordant results and prov...

Biogeographia vol. XX//I - 2002 (Pubblicato il 1° ottobre 2002) Biogeografia degli ambienti costieri Nineteenth century wild ungulates (Mammalia, Artiodactyla) of the island of Lampedusa (Pelagian archipelago, Italy) MARCO MASSETI*, BRUNO ZAV ** *Dz;zuzrtz'mento dzq Biologizz Animale e Geneticzz c[e[[’Uniz/ersz'z‘2z di Firenze, Lazbomtori di Antrop...

Biogeographia - vol. XXI - 2000 (Pubblicato i/ 30 giugno 2000) Biogeografia delI’Anatolia Note on a Near—Eastern relic population of roe deer, Capreolus cczpreolus (L., 1758) (Mammalia, Artiodactyla) MARCO MASSET1 Irtituta di Antmpo/ogizz de[[’U7zz'12e5z'tt‘z di Firenze, Vizz Del Procomolo, 12 — I— 50122 Firenze (Italy) Key words: southern Anatolia...

The aim of the present study is to synthesise the available data on the occurrence of lacertid liz-ards on Mediterranean islands better to understand how far human influence is involved in the present distributional patterns of insular lacertid lizard fauna. At present, the Mediterranean is-lands are inhabited by several lacertid genera, including...

The aim of the present study is to synthesise the available data on the occurrence of lacertid lizards on Mediterranean islands better to understand how far human influence is involved in the present distributional patterns of insular lacertid lizard fauna. At present, the Mediterranean islands are inhabited by several lacertid genera, including en...

The present paper deals with the genetic relationships between the two oldest Italian fallow deer populations (Castelporziano and San Rossore) in order to investigate their origin, and to verify their status and variability in the light of the genetic consequences of human selection through historical times. The analysis, performed using the RAPD f...

During the second millennium BC, the Minoan civilization was established in the southern Aegean Sea. In Minoan art, especially on Crete, birds occupied a prominent place, and were often represented in wall-paintings and craft objects. Species still occurring on the island, such as cormorants, mallards, cuckoos, owls, hoopoes, and swallows, as well...

Abstract The aim of the present paper is to present a preliminary genetic survey of the fallow deer (Dama dama L., 1758) population of the island of Rhodes (Greece) in order to verify its genetic variability. Italian population specimens were chosen as a control group because, as can be ascertained from literature, they have a very low level of var...

Many examples of endemic insular faunas are documented by the paleontological record. The endemisms consist mainly in size variations, which affect mammals in particular. Significant cases are shown by the mammals of the Mediterranean islands, at least since the Early Tertiary. The insular mammal assemblages are characterized by a very low taxonomi...

Many hypotheses have been formulated to explain the increase in micromammal body size and the decrease in macromammal body size in islands. Among these, the occurrence of predators is considered as a possible factor influencing size. This paper analyses the current composition of the terrestrial micromammal populations of the Central Mediterranean...