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Il capitolo, ben illustrato, è dedicato all'ordine dei rafidiotteri di cui sono considerate morfologia, bio-ecologia e sistematica, con particolare riferimento all'Italia.

Il capitolo tratta in modo ampio e articolato i temi della riproduzione, dello sviluppo embrionale e dello sviluppo postembrionale degli esapodi, illustrandoli anche per mezzo di figure.

Il capitolo, ben illustrato, è dedicato all'ordine dei neurotteri di cui sono considerate morfologia, bio-ecologia e sistematica, con particolare riferimento all'Italia.

Il capitolo, ben illustrato, è dedicato all'ordine dei megalotteri di cui sono considerate morfologia, bio-ecologia e sistematica, con particolare riferimento all'Italia.

Le città crescono a ritmo vertiginoso e, con loro, la richiesta di cibo. Una delle grandi sfide che ci troviamo ad affrontare è poter garantire a tutti cibo sano, sicuro, buono e prodotto da un ecosistema in salute. Siamo quindi di fronte a un bivio: da una parte l’inquinamento, l’esaurimento delle risorse, la degradazione del paesaggio, dall’altra la salute e il benessere. Il progetto “From Seed to Spoon” (“Dal seme al cucchiaio”) nasce proprio dall’esigenza di mostrare questo bivio ai nostri ragazzi, gli adulti di domani. A loro consegniamo questo taccuino, che li possa accompagnare a conoscere la natura che li circonda, e a prendersene cura per imboccare la direzione giusta. La natura infatti non è un banale magazzino di prodotti in campagna o una muta decorazione di città. La natura è una “infrastruttura” vivente, necessaria per la salute e il benessere di ciascuno di noi. Prendersi cura della natura significa avere in cambio aria e acqua pulite, suoli fertili, cibo e persino bellezza: con la natura si può accendere di colori, di profumi e di suoni melodiosi anche la città più grigia o la campagna più degradata. La bellezza è uno strumento molto potente: difficile non esserne soggiogati. Ecco quindi il perché di un taccuino naturalistico, uno strumento leggero e maneggevole che fa della bellezza la propria missione. Qui sono illustrati concetti scientifici, forse meno noti ai più come “i servizi ecosistemici”, “la biodiversità intraspecifica”, “gli alberi habitat”, dove la dolcezza dell’arte si fa portavoce della scienza. Nelle prossime pagine, fissate l’occhio del falco cuculo o passate le dita sulle macchie ruvide delle pere o delle mele succose, addentratevi nella faggeta silenziosa o guardate in alto sul campanile di San Giovanni a Parma: pare di sentire le grida allegre dei rondoni. È la gioia della vita che sta intorno a noi.

Cities are growing at a skyrocketing pace, and along with them, so is food demand. One of the great challenges we face is being able to guarantee everyone healthy, safe, good food, produced by a healthy ecosystem. We are therefore facing a crossroads: on one hand, we find pollution, the depletion of resources, the degradation of the landscape; on the other hand, we find health and well-being. The project “From Seed to Spoon” was born precisely from the need to show this crossroads to our children - the adults of tomorrow. We give them this notebook, which will accompany them to get to know surrounding Nature, and in order them to take good care of it, while taking the right direction. As a matter of fact, nature is not a trivial warehouse of products in the countryside or a plain city decoration. Nature is a living “infrastructure”, necessary for the health and well-being of each one of us. Taking care of nature means getting in exchange clean air and water, fertile soils, food, and even beauty: with nature, even the grayest of the cities or the most degraded countryside can brighten up with colors, scents and melodious sounds. Beauty is a very powerful tool: it is hard not to be subjugated by it. Hence the reason for a naturalistic notebook, a light and handy tool that makes of beauty its mission. Here we illustrate scientific concepts, perhaps lesser known to most, such as “ecosystem services”, “intraspecific biodiversity”, “habitat trees”, where the sweetness of art becomes the ‘spokesperson’ of science. In the following pages, check out the red-footed falcon or run your fingers over the rough patches of the pears or of the juicy apples, enter the silent beech forest or look up at the bell tower of San Giovanni in Parma: you can almost hear the cheerful cries of the swifts. It is the joy of life that surrounds us.

The Montecristo wild goat is an endangered feral population that has been on the homony-mous island in the Tuscan Archipelago since ancient times. The origins of Montecristo goats are still debated, with authors dating their introduction either back to Neolithic times or between the 6th and 13th century of the Common Era. To investigate the evolutionary history and relationships of this population we assembled a 50K SNP dataset including 55 Mediterranean breeds and two nuclei of Montecristo goats sampled on the island and from an ex situ conservation project. Diversity levels, gene flow, population structure, and genetic relationships were assessed through multiple approaches. The insular population scored the lowest values of both observed and expected heterozygosity, high-lighting reduced genetic variation, while the ex situ nucleus highlighted a less severe reduction. Multivariate statistics, network, and population structure analyses clearly separated the insular nucleus from all other breeds, including the population of Montecristo goats from the mainland. Moreover, admixture and gene flow analyses pinpointed possible genetic inputs received by the two Montecristo goat nuclei from different sources, while Runs of Homozygosity (ROHs) indicated an ancient bottleneck/founder effect in the insular population and recent extensive inbreeding in the ex situ one. Overall, our results suggest that Montecristo goats experienced several demographic fluctuations combined with admixture events over time and highlighted a noticeable differentiation between the two nuclei.

The collaboration between livestock and wildlife conservation genetics communities has the potential to help promote shared priorities, with respect to emerging technologies and new analytical approaches such as next generation sequencing incorporating adaptive variation. The GLOBALDIV Consortium recently organized an international workshop held at the Ecole Polytechnique Fe ́de ́rale de Lausanne (Switzerland) including a whole-day session with contributions aimed at taking stock of the situation regarding the extent of information and methodology exchange between the two communities. Discussions permitted the identification of potential benefits of further promoting cooperation in the context of genetic monitoring in particular, a central concept to current concerns for both the livestock and wildlife conservation communities.

The pine marten, Martes martes, is a medium-sized terrestrial carnivore associated with woodland habitats of the western Palearctic region. The present distribution area of the species also includes six islands of the western Mediterranean basin. The origin of these insular populations and their taxonomic status are still debated; their molecular characterization appears relevant for conservation purposes. To describe the genetic variability of the pine martens from Sardinia we characterized 40 insular and 14 Italian individuals at seven nuclear microsatellite loci. The identification of private alleles and the calculated FST value of 0.074 revealed some genetic differentiation between the two populations, which accounts for the high percentages of correct allocation (96.39–98.80%) scored by the genotype assignment test. The presence of two distinct clusters corresponding to Sardinia and mainland Italy was further confirmed by the multivariate Factorial Correspondence Analysis of individual genotypes. Moreover, the genome of the Sardinian individuals bore signs of past demographic fluctuations, i.e. the presence of the monomorphic locus Ma-4, a lower allelic richness and a lower number of private alleles, which may derive from the combination of drift, founder effects, and human overexploitation. Anyway, if such events ever affected the Sardinian population, this is likely to have happened in the past since, according to our microsatellite data, the present-day population does not show evidence of recent bottlenecks or inbreeding, the Wilcoxon sign-rank test and the FIS index being not statistically significant (both P > 0.05). Based on this genetic evidence, we advance hypotheses about the distinctiveness of the Sardinian population and its significance for taxonomy and conservation.

The phylogenetic relationships of two cavefish, Phreatichthys andruzzii and Garra barreimiae, belonging to the family Cyprinidae, were investigated by sequencing the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene. These cavefish species are native to Somalia (eastern Africa) and Oman (southeastern Arabian peninsula), respectively, and so far no molecular support to their taxonomy and phylogenetic position was ever provided. The analysis of cytochrome b sequences showed that the species are monophyletic taxa, closely related to each other and to other species of the genus Garra. Molecular clock calculations allowed to date the origin of these hypogaean species back to the Plio-Pleistocene and support the hypothesis that African cyprinids originated from Miocenic immigrations of Asian ancestors.

review of P. Li Causi, 'Generare in comune. Teorie e rappresentazioni dell'ibrido nel sapere zoologico dei Greci e dei Romani'

Many Collembola species are characterised by an aggregative behaviour, which is closely related to communication and co-ordination between individuals. In spite of a general heavy predation pressure, a large number of Collembola is found in soil suggesting that they have developed defence strategies against predators. This study investigates changes in spatial structure of gregarious Collembola species in presence of a predator. It is analysed if the gregarious lifestyle of Collembola populations functions as a defence strategy against predation. In presence of a predator distances between individuals in the Collembola species Folsomia candida and Heteromurus tetrophthalmus became closer, reducing the risk of individuals to be captured by predators. On the contrary, Onychiurus sinensis specimens, which were never caught probably because of the extrusion of repelling fluids by means of their pseudocelli, moved away from each another. Besides being a successful chemical defence against predation, repelling fluid secretion may effectively repel conspecifics, thereby keeping individuals at greater distance.