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Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (49)
Recent studies on oestroidean Diptera (Brachycera) are providing a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the evolutionary history of this remarkably diverse clade of holometabolous insects. The Oestroidea, which includes formidable pests such as various blowflies, botflies, and flesh flies that infest livestock, pets and humans, are mostly com...
Global change is affecting insect populations worldwide as species declines have been reported from different areas of the planet.
Novel approaches such as the identification of Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) could detect areas of high biodiversity value for insect populations. The KBA approach relies on standardised criteria to identify important s...
More than half of the world's population lives in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase. Even if urbanisation is widely regarded as a major threat to global biodiversity, recent research highlighted the potential ecological importance of cities for pollinators. Key determinants of cities' ability to sustain pollinators are the pres...
Managed and wild pollinators often cohabit in both managed and natural ecosystems. The western honeybee, Apis mellifera, is the most widespread managed pollinator species. Due to its density and behaviour, it can potentially influence the foraging activity of wild pollinators, but the strength and direction of this effect are often context-dependen...
Fossils sometimes show unusual morphological features absent in living organisms, making it difficult to reconstruct both their affinity and their function. We describe here a new lacewing larva, Ankyloleon caudatus gen. et sp.n. (Neuroptera) from the Cretaceous amber of Myanmar, characterized by an abdomen unique among insects, with ‘tail-like’ te...
Pison koreense (Radoszkowski), an alien crabronid native of East Asia but introduced in North America and in Germany, was collected for the first time in Italy (Veneto).
Species of the recently recognized Aphaenogaster crocea group, which spreads across Canary Islands, Maghreb region and Southern Italy, have frequently been confused with one another and even with species belonging to other groups. We revised the identity of the population previously attributed to A. crocea from the island of Pantelleria (Sicilian C...
Pelamera atra (Rondani, 1861) is an enigmatic species of bristle fly that has been challenging dipterologists with regard to its taxonomic position within the family Tachinidae since it was first described. The species is rarely collected and is only known from a handful of female specimens. The first ever male specimen of Pelamera atra was collect...
Species are often presumed to be apparent in nature, but in practice they may be difficult to recognise, especially when viewed across continents rather than within a single site. Coalescent-based Poisson-tree-process (PTP) models applied to fast-evolving genes promise one quantitative criterion for recognising species, complete with the estimates...
Aim
To explore how a highly invasive plant species (Buddleja davidii Franch.), managed honeybees and flower diversity affected plant–flower visitor interactions over the whole elevational range distribution of the exotic plant.
Location
Italian Alps.
Methods
We selected nine pairs of sites (one invaded and one non‐invaded by B. davidii ) across g...
The tiger mosquito is a key vector of several human diseases and is considered a public health concern worldwide. The implementation of strategies aimed at maximizing mosquito control without affecting non-target insect groups is of major importance. In a field trial, we tested the efficiency of a natural pyrethrum-based vs. a synthetic pyrethroid-...
Landscapes are becoming increasingly urbanized, causing loss and fragmentation of natural habitats, with potentially negative effects on biodiversity. Insects are among the organisms with the largest diversity in urbanized environments. Here, we sampled predator (Ampulicidae, Sphecidae and Crabronidae) and parasitoid (Tachinidae) flower-visiting in...
Selected sites and coordinates (WGS 84).
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Accumulation curves of sphecid and tachinid species richness against the number of sampling rounds.
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Species lists, relative abundances and trophic behaviors of the larvae for the two predator and parasitoid groups in the study areas.
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Example of contiguity index in the study area.
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Results from the generalized linear models testing the effect of the explanatory variables on abundance-based estimates of sphecids and tachinids: (a) Chao, and (b) first-order Jackknife.
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Explanatory variables in each of the 36 selected sampling sites.
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Collinearity and multicollinearity between explanatory variables.
(DOCX)
BumbleKey is a matrix-based, interactive key to all 45 species of bumblebees of Italy and Corsica. The key allows to identify adult males and females (queens and workers) using morphological characters. The key is published online, open-access, at http://www.interactive-keys.eu/bumblekey/default.aspx.
Elevational gradients are characterized by strong abiotic variation within small geographical distances and provide a powerful tool to evaluate community response to variation in climatic and other environmental factors. We explored how temperature and habitat diversity shape the diversity of holometabolous predator and parasitoid insects along tem...
Scopo di questo lavoro è quello di creare una chiave interattiva per il riconoscimento delle specie di formiche della città di Roma e di tutti i generi presenti in Italia, utilizzando la piattaforma MOSCHweb (www.tachinidae.eu). I caratteri e i loro diversi stati, da noi scelti per la realizzazione delle matrici, sono stati estrapolati principalmen...
The value of ants to bears is a topic of substantial relevance for the small and highly endangered population of Apennine brown bears (Ursus arctos marsicanus) in central Italy. Following a previous food-habit study (2006–2009) based on scat analysis, we used the same data set to further investigate patterns of ant consumption by Apennine bears at...
The myrmecophilous immature stages of hover flies of the genus Microdon Meigen, 1803 (Diptera, Syrphidae) are still poorly known and only about 15 species were previously incompletely described and/or illustrated using light microscopy based on occasional findings mainly of pupae and third instar larvae. The exceptional finding of a large number of...
As predator and parasitoid insects depend on multiple resources for adult feeding and reproduction, environmental heterogeneity (EH) is expected to be a key driver of their species diversity. In temperate regions, the benefits of EH are expected to vary across spatial scales and seasons, depending on species life‐history traits and temporal fluctua...
Communities of the canopy of temperate forests are still relatively unexplored. Furthermore, very little is known on how vertical stratifi-cation for some insect groups is related to biological strategies. In this study, we investigated the community composition of both canopy and understory of the families Ampulicidae, Crabronidae and Sphecidae (H...
em>Bruchidius raddianae (Anton & Delobel 2003), a species of seed beetle spread in Northern Africa, was detected for the first time in Europe in some localities of the Southern Iberian Peninsula in 2007. In Spain this coleopteran lives on the shrubs of the South African acacia tree, Vachellia karroo (Hayne) Banfi & Galasso, currently present in the...
The first evidence of the introduction of the Nearctic mud-dauber wasp Chalybion californicum (de Saussure, 1867) into Europe is presented and discussed. The species is by now possibly established in southern Croatia.
In recent decades the European populations of wild boar have grown substantially, as has the impact of this species, owing above all to its rooting activity. Our aim was to investigate the relationships between vascular plant understorey and wild boar rooting intensity. The questions we addressed are: does rooting intensity influence understorey sp...
Data on trophic habits of S. perspicillata are based on the analysis of the stomach content of 122 larvae and of 124 fecal pellets from adults, collected from seven sites in Central Italy. Larvae fed mainly on Branchiopoda, Ostracoda and larval Diptera, but also on terrestrial Aphididae, probably fallen into the water. They are active foragers and...
The management of wild boar (Sus scrofa) is an issue of increasing global conservation concern.
Statistically robust monitoring protocols, allowing the detection of biologically relevant changes in
biodiversity indices due to wild boar activities, are crucial tools for the management of wild boar
populations. The goal of our study was to present a...
The European bone-skippers (Diptera: Piophilidae: Thyreophorina), long considered extinct, have recently been the object of much interest by dipterists after their unexpected rediscovery. Considerable faunistic work has been done on these flies in recent years. However, some nomenclatural and taxonomic issues still require attention. A neotype is d...
The first evidence of the introduction of the oriental mud-dauber wasp Chalybion bengalense (Dahlbom, 1845) in Italy and Europe is presented and discussed. The species is by now established in Verona and Rovigo provinces (Veneto region, Northeastern Italy).
Direct observations of hilltopping behaviour in the thick-headed flies (Diptera: Conopidae) have only been mentioned once in the literature. Hilltop collecting, however, may be an effective way to survey these endparasitoids. The first evidence of hilltopping in species belonging to the subfamilies Myopinae and Dalmanniinae is presented and discuss...
The male of Zodion nigritarsis (Strobl, 1902) is described and the known distribution of the species summarised. Some old names of Zodion Latreille, 1796 are reviewed and the following new synonymies are proposed: Zodion frontalis (Fabricius, 1805), Z. notatum (Meigen, 1804) and Z. subapertum Rondani, 1868 are synonymised with Zodion cinereum (Fabr...
Myotis capaccinii is one of the most endangered Mediterranean bats. We radio tracked 21 adult individuals to assess foraging range and analyse micro-habitat selection around a nursery roost in central Italy. Habitats were characterized by development of riparian vegetation, distance between banks, degree of water clutter and levels of water polluti...
Eugymnopeza braueri, a tachinid known up to now only from the type pair reared from an adult carabid, was rediscovered in Central Italy, where it was bred from adult Blaps gibba (Coleoptera, Tenebrionidae). The first available data on the biology and behaviour of this parasitoid are provided and discussed. A redescription of the species is given, c...
An up-to-date synthesis is presented of the available faunistic and biological data concerning the Italian species belonging to the socially parasitic ant generaEpimyrma Emery andChalepoxenus Menozzi.
The first known populations ofE. corsica (Emery) andE. stumperi (Kutter) in Italy were discovered in the Lucretili mountains (Latium) and in Alto Adi...
