Niccolò Fattorini

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Verified

Niccolò verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• PhD
• Researcher (RTDa) at University of Siena

Evolutionary theory suggests two alternative ways in which competitive interactions could vary in response to different levels of food abundance. Competition theory suggests that aggression should be greater when resource availability is lower, as an evolutionary stable strategy to access food. Alternatively, energy allocated to aggressive interact...

The mitigation of ecological/economic impacts of wild boar Sus scrofa is one of the most challenging issues in wildlife management worldwide. Monitoring population density and impact of wild boar is crucial to plan appropriate management actions to reduce its density, environmental impact and epidemiological risk, as well as to evaluate control eff...

Impacts of herbivory by wild ungulates represent a significant issue world-wide. To be effective, management of populations and impacts needs to be coordinated above the site scale, yet little research has investigated the appropriate spatial scale over which management should be integrated to be fully effective. In consideration of reduction of im...

The potential for climate change to affect animal behaviour is widely recognized, yet its possible consequences on aggressiveness are still unclear. If warming and drought limit the availability of food resources, climate change may elicit an increase of intraspecific conflicts stemming from resource competition. By measuring aggressivity indices i...

Migratory connectivity, reflecting the extent by which migrants tend to maintain their reciprocal positions in seasonal ranges, can assist in the conservation and management of mobile species, yet relevant drivers remain unclear. Taking advantage of an exceptionally large (~150,000 individuals, 83 species) and more‐than‐a‐century‐long dataset of bi...

The analysis of mechanisms underlying prey use and selection is crucial for understanding the potential for apex predators to shape ecological processes across trophic levels. Significant implications for the conservation and management of ecosystems can ensue, especially in human-modified landscapes characterised by the recent recovery of apex pre...

Wild ungulates can influence various trophic levels, regulating carnivore abundance and affecting habitat structure. Conservation problems can arise when high ungulate densities threaten species or habitats with conservation concern. Assessing factors influencing the intensity of their impact is important to identify appropriate measures enhancing...

A continuous balance between costs and benefits dictates individual vigilance and foraging dynamics. In group-living animals, understanding the resulting trade-off is often complicated by multiple confounding effects. Vigilance and foraging levels may be the result of intrinsic (e.g., body size, trophic ecology, migratory phenology) and extrinsic (...

In polygynous ungulates, males are often larger than females and bear more elaborate/larger weapons. Quantifying sexual dimorphism in different traits could provide insights into species-specific evolutionary pathways of sexual selection. Concerning the combination of secondary sexual traits, we found that Himalayan tahr (Hemitragus jemlahicus) is...

Wild ungulates can influence various trophic levels, regulating carnivore abundance as well as affecting habitat structure. Conservation problems can arise when high ungulate densities threaten species or habitats with conservation concern. Assessing factors influencing the intensity of their impact is important to identify appropriate measures enh...

Background The study of the timing of migration is fundamental to the understanding of the ecology of many bird species and their response to climate change, and it has important conservation and management implications e.g., for assessing the hunting seasons according to the EU Directive 2009/147/EC (Birds Directive). Methods We developed a new m...

Background There is need of information on ecological interactions that keystone species such as apex predators establish in ecosystems recently recolonised. Interactions among carnivore species have the potential to influence community-level processes, with consequences for ecosystem dynamics. Although avoidance of apex predators by smaller carniv...

The use of species detection rates gathered from motion‐sensitive cameras as relative abundance indices (RAIs) could be a cost‐effective tool to monitor wildlife populations; however, validations based on comparisons with reference methods are necessary. We considered 3 ungulates, wild boar (Sus scrofa), roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), and fallow d...

Understanding how individuals redistribute after migration assists in the conservation and management of mobile species, yet the eco-evolutionary drivers of migratory connectivity remain unclear. Taking advantage of an exceptionally large (~150,000 individuals, 83 species) and more-than-a-century long dataset of bird ringing encounters, we investig...

The recognition of the ecological quality of ecosystems and habitats therein is increasingly important in the Anthropocene. However, there are still scarcely explored ways of how and what to assess to obtain a sound ecological status of habitats. Ferns are an understudied plant group, especially given their usefulness as ecological indicators. Dise...

Identifying the factors influencing seabird breeding output is critical for their conservation because breeding performance in turn influences population dynamics. This is particularly important in sensitive environments, where ecological disturbances can lead to changes in population trends of extremely specialized species in a relatively short ti...

The European brown hare Lepus europaeus is the most widely distributed hare species of the world, being naturally present throughout Eurasia and introduced as a game species in most continents. Despite the importance of this lagomorph for both management and conservation, a quantitative summary of its spatiotemporal behaviour is still lacking. Taki...

In wild ungulates, habitat choice usually is influenced by foraging constraints and predator avoidance, potentially leading to spatial variation of population density (e.g., greater densities in food rich or safer habitats). Assessing habitat-correlates of abundance and foraging activity in turn is important in understanding determinants of distrib...

Body size and body mass are key indicators of individual phenotypic quality and predictors of important life-history traits such as survival and reproductive success. In wild herbivores, individual responses to changing environmental conditions influence morphometric traits over temporal scales and between populations. However, little research has...

Sexing weakly/criptically dimorphic birds requires invasive techniques or molecular analysis. Alternatively, sexing can be based upon morphometric analysis, which remains invaluable in remote field conditions such as Polar regions. Nevertheless, discriminatory power may be affected by methodological issues hampering comparison between/within studie...

• Interspecific competition may be particularly exacerbated when occurring between native and invasive alien species, with environmental conditions affecting drivers of natural selection and shaping spatio‐temporal dynamics of animal communities. The effects of invaders are particularly evident in aquatic ecosystems with delicate and complex balanc...

Genetic structure may be highly variable across seabird species, and particularly among those that are distributed over large geographical areas. The Adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) is a numerically dominant Antarctic seabird that is considered to be a key species in coastal ecosystems. Since the Last Glacial Maximum, penguin colonization of th...

Analysis of spatiotemporal partitioning is pivotal to shed light on interspecific coexistence. Most research effort has involved large-sized carnivores and their prey, whereas little attention has been devoted to lagomorphs. We assessed spatiotemporal overlap among the European brown hare Lepus europaeus and its potential competitors and predators...

The original version of this article unfortunately contained two mistakes.

This work aimed to study the contaminant pattern in Kongsfjorden marine environment (Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, 79°N 12°E) and to disentangle the trend and seasonality in the contamination. The results obtained within two surface water sampling campaigns in two different seasons are shown. GC-MS and LC-MS/MS determinations revealed the occurrence of pol...

The cover image is based on the Original Article Changes in functional composition and diversity of waterbirds: The roles of water level and submerged macrophytes, by İbrahim Kaan Özgencil https://doi.org/10.1111/fwb.13531.

The use of indicator species has become a standard monitoring approach in environmental risk assessment; however, pollutant bioavailability and its geographical distribution as well as species-sensitiveness could be affected by different factors. The present study investigated the potential use of the land snail Cornu aspersum as bioindicator of in...

Mountains are strongly seasonal habitats, which require special adaptations in wildlife species living on them. Population dynamics of mountain ungulates are largely determined by the availability of rich food resources to sustain lactation and weaning during summer. Increases of temperature affect plant phenology and nutritional quality. Cold-adap...

Mountains are strongly seasonal habitats, which require special adaptations in wildlife species living on them. Population dynamics of mountain ungulates are largely determined by the availability of rich food resources to sustain lactation and weaning during summer. Increases of temperature affect plant phenology and nutritional quality. Cold-adap...

There is a growing interest on the potential interplay between weather, habitat and interspecific competition on population dynamics of wild herbivores. Favorable environmental conditions may buffer the negative effects of competition; conversely, competition may be expected to be stronger under harsh environmental conditions. We investigated relat...

• Water level and submerged macrophytes are critical players for the functioning of shallow lake ecosystems; understanding how waterbird communities respond to changes in both can have important implications for conservation and management. Here, we evaluated the effects of changes in water level and submerged macrophyte status on wintering waterbi...

Assessing impacts of wild boar on ecosystems is a research priority worldwide, with applied implications for environmental management. We evaluated whether rooting intensity by wild boar affected a rodent community in Central Italy. Rooting intensity was measured within trap transects and all around them, following standard procedures. We live-trap...

The spatial behaviour of seven male and five female Apennine hares Lepus corsicanus was studied in a scrub-wood area of Central Italy, through radiotracking. The median percentage of home-range overlap was about five times lower between females (< 15%) than between males (75%). Intrasexual aggression was recorded for females, but never for males. N...

The ecological drivers underlying breeding performance are expected to differ across the geographical range of seabird species, but few studies have compared trade-offs between colonies with different local conditions. During chick-rearing (2000–01), we compared the foraging trips, diet and breeding parameters of two Adélie penguin colonies in the...

Movements, habitat use, and activity of herbivorous species are mainly influenced by trade-offs between food availability and daily/seasonal variation in predation risk. Nevertheless, studies conducted across several seasons and evaluating both spatial and temporal responses of meso-small herbivores are still scanty. Additionally, information on sp...

Interspecific interactions shape the structure of animal communities, and they rely on a number of multifactorial mechanisms, including e.g. activity rhythms, ectoparasite prevalence, predation pressure and food habits. Despite this, no study has analysed multispecies interactions by combining such a high number of aspects, mostly because the exper...

Antarctic seabirds well adapted to extreme environments often deal during their life cycle with sub-optimal conditions and occasionally with severe environmental stress. Climate changes, pollution, habitat loss, increasing human presence can all significantly affect organism’s health status from molecular to individual up to population level. In th...

In temperate ecosystems, seasonality influences animal behaviour. Food availability, weather, photoperiod and endogenous factors relevant to the biological cycle of individuals have been shown as major drivers of temporal changes in activity rhythms and group size/structure of herbivorous species. We evaluated how diurnal female foraging activity a...

The crested porcupine Hystrix cristata is undergoing a marked range expansion in Italy, and it is reaching the northern regions, where it was historically absent. We studied its dispersal ability by marking 86 subadult individuals through coloured tapes on dorsal quills, in contrasting environmental context (i.e. coastal scrubland, deciduous woodla...

Group‐living requires a compromise between safety and direct/indirect costs for individuals. The larger is the group, the greater is the collective vigilance, leading to a greater net food intake per forager because of the time saved individually from scanning behaviour. In turn, individual alertness usually decreases with increasing group size (“g...

Parasite-mediated competition has been reported to be one of the most harmful, although overlooked, impacts that alien species have on native ecosystems. Monk parakeets Myiopsitta monachus are successful invaders in Europe, where they have been introduced from South America. Colonial nests of these parrots may also host other species, e.g. the rock...

Evolutionary theory suggests two alternative ways in which competitive interactions could vary in response to different levels of food abundance. Competition theory suggests that aggression should be greater when resource availability is lower, as an evolutionary stable strategy to access food. Alternatively, energy allocated to aggressive interact...

Intrinsic and environmental stressors, such as age and seasonality, may influence social behavior and endocrine levels in gregarious foragers, but little is known about how season and age affect both behavioral and physiological responses. We evaluated seasonal/age variation of aggression and vigilance, and seasonal/age variation of endocrine level...

Antipredator strategies and social factors may influence vigilance behaviour in herbivores. Vigilance can differ between sex/age classes, but information is contradictory in the existing literature. We investigated sex/age differences of vigilance in fallow deer Dama dama, in a Mediterranean area. Females (> 1 year old) showed a lower proportion of...

Hares are a major prey for many carnivorous vertebrates worldwide. Their occurrence in the diet of predators is mostly assessed through the analysis of indigested remains (especially hair) in faeces or pellets. In Italy, four hare species are present, locally occurring in sympatry, and several studies confirmed they are preyed upon by 15 carnivorou...

Antipredator behaviour is a multifactorial process – e.g. landscape features, escape tactics of prey, probability of encountering predators, predator type, age, sex and physical state of prey. Ungulates show a wide range of antipredator ploys. As reactions of mountain ungulates to their predators are still poorly understood, we hereby report on two...

Coexistence of individuals within a social group is possible through the establishment of a hierarchy. Social dominance is achieved through aggressive interactions, and, in wild sheep and goats, it is related mainly to age, body size and weapon size as rank signals. Adult male Himalayan tahr are much larger than females and subadult males. They hav...

Camera trapping has been used to assess the temporal activity patterns and the habitat selection of the Indian crested porcupine, Hystrix indica Kerr 1792, in the Shuklaphanta Wildlife Reserve (in Western Nepal). Data have been collected during two winter sessions (December 2008–April 2009, November 2009–January 2010). The effective sampling area i...