Skip to main content
eScholarship
Open Access Publications from the University of California

About

Biogeographia – The Journal of Integrative Biogeography is the scientific journal of the Italian Biogeography Society (SIB, https://www.biogeografia.it [in Italian only]). Since 1970, it publishes original research and reviews on any topic in biogeography.


Data Papers

Freshwater and limno-terrestrial meiofauna of the Massane Forest Reserve in the Eastern French Pyrenees

We report the results of a faunistic survey focused on freshwater and limno-terrestrial meiofauna to improve biodiversity knowledge in a protected area in the Eastern part of the French Pyrénées: the Massane Forest Reserve (336 Ha). The survey provided 1187 occurrence records from 315 taxa (most resoved at species-level), uploaded as a shared online dataset. The highest number of occurrences and distinguishable morpho-taxon belong to the group Nematoda (775 occurrences, 172 taxa), followed by Rotifera (219 occurrences, 67 taxa), Platyhelminthes (85 occurrences, 32 taxa), Tardigrada (69 occurrences, 25 taxa), and Gastrotricha (39 occurrences, 19 taxa). A diversity of meiofaunal organisms was found, in large numbers, in all the samples screened: from stream biofilms and sediments, to forest floor soils, mosses, and litter, to a broad range of tree-related micro-habitats associated with beech-like epixylic mosses and lichens, tree cavities, woodpecker breeding holes, bark pockets and fruiting bodies of saproxylic fungi. This survey makes the Massane forest one of the few protected areas of the world with a taxa-inclusive meiofauna dataset, which could serve as a standard inventory to further consider micro-invertebrates in forest conservation.

Articles

Cardiocondyla obscurior, a new alien ant in Crete (Hymenoptera, Formicidae)

We report for the first time the occurrence of the alien ant Cardiocondyla obscurior Wheeler, 1929 on the Greek island of Crete. Cardiocondyla obscurior is one of many congeneric taxa with worldwide success as tramp species, having attained a cosmopolitan distribution while having Indomalayan origins. It was first detected in Europe in 1999, and since 2015 it has started to be found outdoors in Southern European countries. Our record is the first in Europe in which the species is observed to be established outdoors in an agricultural area instead of an urban environment. Introduced Cardiocondyla ants are generally thought to have little ecological impact, although targeted studies have been lacking. Cardiocondyla obscurior is the third species of its genus to be found on the island of Crete, which is characterized by a remarkable ant diversity.

Long-term trend of Italian breeding forest birds and comparison with the other Mediterranean peninsulas

The author has carried out a bibliographic survey of the status of breeding forest birds in Italy over 15 decades (1872-2022) in order to establish an objective long-term trend (stable, increasing, decreasing, etc.). The number of breeding forest birds in Italy amounts to 61; their distribution, with a few exceptions, indicates that they are widespread in Eurasia, but only a small percentage of Eurasian forest species have colonized Italy and the other Mediterranean peninsulas, namely 49 in Iberian, 61 in Italian and 64 in Balkan peninsulas; a small percentage of them (between 15.6 and 19.7%) belongs to trans-Saharan migrants, and between 31.2 and 40.8% increases their populations in winter. The similarity between the forest species on the three peninsulas (Iberian, Italian, and Balkan) results between 0.45 and 0.48, indicating a certain difference in the overall avifauna in the three territories. Not all species have penetrated southwards into the three peninsulas; for example, some that stopped in the Italian Alps have instead arrived in the forests of Greece, at a latitude corresponding to southern Italy, or species that in Italy stopped in the northern Apennines in the other two peninsulas have instead arrived far south. Iberian peninsula and the island of Corsica hold three endemic species among breeding forest birds, Italian and Balkan peninsulas have no endemic species. A tentative reconstruction of the climatic vicissitudes of the Mediterranean has been made to explain why only broadly distributed Eurasian forest species have penetrated the Mediterranean peninsulas. Overall, the Mediterranean presently hosts mainly neo-endemic taxa among forest bird species; the only paleo-endemics can be considered the three species of nuthatches living in Corsica, Algeria, and Turkey (other than Caucasus and the islet of Lesvos) and Le Vaillant’s woodpecker in the Maghreb (North Africa). Italian forests presently cover ca. 40% of the land surface, increasing since 1980’, but 22% of woodland is not of natural origin (3.3% due to afforestation). However, it is difficult to know the true increase of forests, because some of them are fired every year. The presence of some ecologically demanding forest birds depends on the age of the trees, permanent open spaces and other characteristics at the edge of woodland.