The decline of the charismatic Parnassius mnemosyne (L.) (Lepidoptera: Papilionidae) in a Central Italy national park: a call for urgent actions

Here we report the strong decline of a population of the endangered species Parnassius mnemosyne (Linnaeus, 1758) (Lepidoptera: Papilionidae) in the National Park of Foreste Casentinesi, Monte Falterona and Campigna (Italy). We compared historical presence data (before 1969) with current data from two years of monitoring (2018–2019) and provided evidence of a drastic reduction in the number of sites inhabited by the species. A preliminary assessment suggested that the population of P. mmemosyne occurring in the Park is limited to a few individuals. We argue that the population of this iconic and charismatic butterfly is at the verge of extinction in this National Park, probably because of a combination of habitat loss (i.e. decrease in size and number of areas of open grassland on the mountain belt) and climatic changes. Being one of the few populations of P. mnemosyne in the Northern Apennines, the implementation of protection measures is a high conservation priority. Several other butterfly species on the Italian mountains that are facing the same survival challenges would also benefit from the establishment of conservation actions aimed at improving habitat quality for P. mnemosyne. Present article is meant to call for action researchers, stakeholders, and especially decision-makers in order to increase the efforts to upturn the evident decline in abundance of this population

The decline of the charismatic Parnassius mnemosyne (L.) (Lepidoptera: Papilionidae) in a central italy national park: A call for urgent actions

Here we report the strong decline of a population of the endangered species Parnassius mnemosyne (Linnaeus, 1758) (Lepidoptera: Papilionidae) in the National Park of Foreste Casentinesi, Monte Falterona and Campigna (Italy). We compared historical presence data (before 1969) with current data from two years of monitoring (2018–2019) and provided evidence of a drastic reduction in the number of sites inhabited by the species. A preliminary assessment suggested that the population of P. mmemosyne occurring in the Park is limited to a few individuals. We argue that the population of this iconic and charismatic butterfly is at the verge of extinction in this National Park, probably because of a combination of habitat loss (i.e. decrease in size and number of areas of open grassland on the mountain belt) and climatic changes. Being one of the few populations of P. mnemosyne in the Northern Apennines, the implementation of protection measures is a high conservation priority. Several other butterfly species on the Italian mountains that are facing the same survival challenges would also benefit from the establishment of conservation actions aimed at improving habitat quality for P. mnemosyne. Present article is meant to call for action researchers, stakeholders, and especially decision-makers in order to increase the efforts to upturn the evident decline in abundance of this population

Simple and informative: applying a basic Anthophila monitoring scheme in a simplified insular ecosystem

The decline of pollinators and the consequent decay of pollination services call for the establishment of monitoring schemes for several groups of pollinators. For Anthophila (Hymenoptera), the design of monitoring schemes is still under development. The main difficulties lie in combining a reliable but field-feasible taxonomic identification with the collection of informative data about the consistency and functional role of pollinator populations. Here we report on the application of the Italian monitoring scheme for pollinators recently defined by ISPRA and the University of Turin in agreement with the European Pollinators Monitoring Scheme on the small island of Giannutri (Tuscany), a simplified insular ecosystem with a virtually unknown pollinator community. This island has recently experienced a drastic change in its bee community, as since 2018 honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) hives are regularly moved every year to the island for breeding purposes. In the spring 2021 we established six 250 m long fixed transects and performed a total of 48 surveys (8 for each transect), recording more than 2300 observations of 9 Anthophila bee taxa and the flowers they visited. By using generalised additive mixed models, we showed that the monitoring protocol has a good potential for monitoring Anthophila, as we could verify several expected relationships between Anthophila abundance and abiotic factors (season, hour of the day, distance from the apiary) and biotic factors (abundance of flower resources). More importantly, we verified that A. mellifera represents by far the most frequent Anthophila taxon. Our data do not show evidence for spatial partition between A. mellifera and the other most frequent taxa (Bombus terrestris L. and Anthophora spp.). The visit network based on transect observations also showed that these taxa largely overlapped in terms of visits to flower resources. Overall, our data showed that the monitoring protocol allows gathering informative data about Anthophila taxa abundance, interactions and flower-visits. Moreover, the spatial and flower-visit overlap suggest potential for competition between honey bees and wild pollinators, with a potential consequent resource depletion for the latter. While this hypothesis could only be assessed by a long-term monitoring and ad hoc honey bee removal experiments, our data show that this basic monitoring protocol produces rapid and valuable information about Anthophila community and dynamics

Two ways to be endemic. Alps and Apennines are different functional refugia during climatic cycles

Endemics co-occur because they evolved in situ and persist regionally or because they evolved ex situ and later dispersed to shared habitats, generating evolutionary or ecological endemicity centres, respectively. We investigate whether different endemicity centres can intertwine in the region ranging from Alps to Sicily, by studying their butterfly fauna. We gathered an extensive occurrence data set for butterflies of the study area (27,123 records, 269 species, in cells of 0.5 × 0.5 degrees of latitude-longitude). We applied molecular-based delimitation methods (GMYC model) to 26,557 cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (COI) sequences of Western Palearctic butterflies. We identified entities based on molecular delimitations and/or the checklist of European butterflies and objectively attributed occurrences to their most probable entity. We obtained a zoogeographic regionalisation based on the 69 endemics of the area. Using phylogenetic ANOVA we tested if endemics from different centres differ from each other and from nonendemics for key ecological traits and divergence time. Endemicity showed high incidence in the Alps and Southern Italy. The regionalisation separated the Alps from the Italian Peninsula and Sicily. The endemics of different centres showed a high turnover and differed in phylogenetic distances, phenology and distribution traits. Endemics are on average younger than nonendemics and the Peninsula-Sicily endemics also have lower variance in divergence than those from the Alps. The observed variation identifies Alpine endemics as paleoendemics, now occupying an ecological centre, and the Peninsula-Sicily ones as neoendemics, that diverged in the region since the Pleistocene. The results challenge the common view of the Alpine-Apennine area as a single “Italian refugium”

Enhancement of the Biological and Mechanical Performances of Sintered Hydroxyapatite by Multiple Ions Doping

In the present work, hydroxyapatite (HA) nanoparticles doped with Mg2+, Sr2+, and Zn2+ ions are developed by wet neutralization method and then sintered at 1,250°C to obtain bulk consolidated materials. Physicochemical and microstructural analyses show that the presence of doping ions in the HA structure induced the formation of βTCP as secondary phase, during the sintering process, and we found that this effect is depending on the stability of the various doping ions in the hydroxyapatite lattice itself. We also found that the formation of βTCP as secondary phase, in turn, confines the grain growth of HA induced by the high-temperature sintering process, thus leading to a strong increase of the flexural strength of the bulk materials, according to Hall-Petch-like law. Furthermore, we found that the doping ions enter also in the structure of the βTCP phase; besides the grain growth confinement, also the solubility and ion release ability of the final materials were enhanced. In addition to ameliorate the mechanical performance, the described phenomena also activate multiple biofunctionalities: (i) ability to upregulate various genes involved in the osteogenesis, as obtained by human adipose stem cells culture and evaluated by array technology; (ii) enhanced resistance to the adhesion and proliferation of Gram+ and Gram– bacterial strains. Hence, our results open a perspective for the use of sintered multiple ion-doped HA to develop ceramic biodevices, such as plates, screws, or other osteosynthesis media, with enhanced strength, osteointegrability, and the ability to prevent post-surgical infections

New monocyclic and acyclic hNK-2 antagonists retaining the β-turn feature

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The isolated Erebia pandrose Apennine population is genetically unique and endangered by climate change

Climate change is causing shifts in the distribution of many species and populations inhabiting mountain tops are particularly vulnerable to these threats because they are constrained in altitudinal shifts. Apennines are a relatively narrow and low mountain chain located in Southern Europe, which hosts many isolated populations of mountain species. The butterfly Erebia pandrose was recorded for the last time in the Apennines in 1977, on the top of a single massif (Monti della Laga). We confirmed the presence of a small, isolated population of E. pandrose in the Apennines, at a distance of more than 400 km to any other known populations. Then, we examined the cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 mitochondrial DNA marker of this species across the Palaearctic area and estimated the potential decline over the Alps and the Apennines due to future climatic changes. The Apennine population represents an endemic lineage characterised by eight mutations over the 658 bp analysed (1.2%). In the Alps and Apennines, this species has shifted uphill more than 3 m per year since the end of the 19th century and more than 22 m per year since 1995. Species distribution models suggested that these mountain populations will experience a generalised loss of climatic suitability, which, according to our projections, could lead to the extinction of the Apennine population in a few decades. Erebia pandrose has the potential to become a flagship species for advertising the risk of losing unique fractions of genetic diversity for mountain species

DNA Barcoding the Geometrid Fauna of Bavaria (Lepidoptera): Successes, Surprises, and Questions

BACKGROUND: The State of Bavaria is involved in a research program that will lead to the construction of a DNA barcode library for all animal species within its territorial boundaries. The present study provides a comprehensive DNA barcode library for the Geometridae, one of the most diverse of insect families. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: This study reports DNA barcodes for 400 Bavarian geometrid species, 98 per cent of the known fauna, and approximately one per cent of all Bavarian animal species. Although 98.5% of these species possess diagnostic barcode sequences in Bavaria, records from neighbouring countries suggest that species-level resolution may be compromised in up to 3.5% of cases. All taxa which apparently share barcodes are discussed in detail. One case of modest divergence (1.4%) revealed a species overlooked by the current taxonomic system: Eupithecia goossensiata Mabille, 1869 stat.n. is raised from synonymy with Eupithecia absinthiata (Clerck, 1759) to species rank. Deep intraspecific sequence divergences (>2%) were detected in 20 traditionally recognized species. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The study emphasizes the effectiveness of DNA barcoding as a tool for monitoring biodiversity. Open access is provided to a data set that includes records for 1,395 geometrid specimens (331 species) from Bavaria, with 69 additional species from neighbouring regions. Taxa with deep intraspecific sequence divergences are undergoing more detailed analysis to ascertain if they represent cases of cryptic diversity