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The Balkan Water frog (Pelophylax kurtmuelleri) is the most widespread frog in Greece, occurring also in Albania, Montenegro and Serbia and recently introduced in Italy and Denmark. However, its biology remains surprisingly understudied. Here we assess for the first time the feeding ecology of the species. We focused on two populations from Attica (central Greece), one from a natural habitat (Erasinos River) and another from an artificial landscape (Diomidous Botanical Garden). We aimed to clarify the impact of the habitat on the feeding preferences of the species, and also to examine how food availability affects food composition and selectivity. For the purposes of the study a total of 75 individuals (41 from the Botanical Garden and 34 from Erasinos River) were captured and stomach content was removed following the flushing method. We measured body weight, snout-vent length and mouth width for all captured individuals and also width and length for each prey item. Prey availability was evaluated with the quadrat counts method. The diet of P. kurtmuelleri followed the same general feeding pattern of other ranid species in the broader area, with insects, spiders, isopods and gastropods dominating in stomach content. The habitat had a strong impact on the feeding preferences of the species: food composition, prey frequency, size and volume differed considerably between the two populations. Niche breadth was higher in the Botanical Garden, probably as a result of the lower invertebrate diversity and abundance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article concerns the Greek fauna of classical and late antiquity and changes up to the present day. The main sources for the fauna of antiquity are historical, geographical and zoological texts, as well as descriptions from travellers who visited Greece. The study of the texts of classical and late antiquity was based on the following classical authors: Xenophon, Aristotle, Aristophanes Byzantios, Pliny, Dio Chrysostom, Plutarch, Pausanias and Aelian. Some species that were included in the Greek fauna of classical and late antiquity, such as the lion and the leopard, are today extinct in Greece, whereas some other species that are now common, such as the cat, the chicken and the peacock, were introduced about that time or a little earlier from other regions. Some other species that are also common today, such as the wild rabbit and the pheasant, were unknown at that time, as they appeared later in Greece from other areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]