Pierpaolo Merluzzi’s scientific contributions

Wetlands belong to the most highly threatened habitat types on our planet. In Europe, many wetlands have been destroyed or degraded by human activities, including drainage, agricultural land use, industrialization, regulation and damming of river courses, pollution, eutrophication, invasions of non-native species and other actions. In northern Italy, many wetlands have disappeared and been replaced by intensive croplands or industrial areas, leading to a drastic decline of many wetland species. The Adriatic Marbled Bush-Cricket, Zeuneriana marmorata (Fieber, 1853), is a rare bush- cricket species, which is found in a few wetlands in north-eastern Italy (Friuli Venezia Giulia) and Slovenia. It has a loud and highly characteristic song, which creates a unique acoustic atmosphere in the very few places where it still exists. The species occurs in coastal reed beds (Fig. 1), where it is only found where the reed vegetation is not too dense and the water not too saline. Only four populations of this species still exist with an estimated total of 3,000- 5,000 adult individuals per year (a very small number for an insect species). The entire remaining habitat of this species has a size of 0.57 km² (57 ha) with only ca. 16 ha being left in Italy. Z. marmorata is quite sedentary and sensitive to habitat destruction.

In this paper are reported three new localities of Zeuneriana marmorata (Fieber, 1853), located in two different coast areas in Friuli Venezia Giulia Region. On June 2014 the species was found at the Isonzo mouth, near the village of Fossalon di Grado. On July 2016 Zeuneriana marmorata was discovered in two localities of Marano Lagoon, in the Stella delta and in an area located between Cormor and Muzzanella river. At the present time the known populations of this rare species live in four areas, three in Italy (Marano Lagoon, Isonzo mouth, Lisert near Monfalcone) and one in Slovenia (Ljubljansko Barje near Lubjana). In Italy Zeuneriana marmorata lives in wet meadows and reed-lands, which are periodically flooded and whose vegetation is prevalently constituted by Phragmites australis, Juncus sp. and Carex sp.; in Italian sites located along the Adriatic coast, the species can tolerate a low salinity. The species do not live in sites, which are flooded for long periods during the good season. Zeuneriana marmorata is an endangered species, due to its rarity, its restricted ecological requirements and the vulnerability of its habitat. One of the Italian sites (Lisert) needs urgently interventions to restoring and conserving the wet habitats suitable for this species.