Analysis of Light Pollution in Ticino region during the period 2011-2016

Since 2002, the Environmental Observatory of Southern Switzerland (OASI) has monitored a remarkable set of environmental parameters with the purpose of performing an enhanced observation of the regional environmental conditions. Since 2011, a campaign for the supervision of the artificial nighttime skyglow has been included in the OASI monitoring system exploiting the collaboration with DarkSky association. This network monitors the light pollution in several areas of Ticino, the southernmost Swiss Canton bordering Italy. It consists of multiple stations, which continuously measure the sky brightness. The University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland, in collaboration with Politecnico di Milano, introduces the results of a study regarding the skyglow evolution during the period 2011-2016. The time-series of the OASI network were pre-processed to detect and discard data affected by natural perturbing events, such as moon and clouds presence and sun effect during twilights. In a second time, a distribution analysis of the data and an evaluation of the brightness trend during the considered period were performed. The results show that light pollution in Ticino is strictly influenced by the northern area of the nearby Italian Lombardy region and that during the surveyed years a decreasing of the pollution occurred

Twofold cost of reproduction: an increase in parental effort leads to higher malarial parasitaemia and to a decrease in resistance to oxidative stress.

Parental effort is usually associated with high metabolism that could lead to an increase in the production of reactive oxidative species giving rise to oxidative stress. Since many antioxidants involved in the resistance to oxidative stress can also enhance immune function, an increase in parental effort may diminish the level of antioxidants otherwise involved in parasite resistance. In the present study, we performed brood size manipulation in a population of great tits (Parus major) to create different levels of parental effort. We measured resistance to oxidative stress and used a newly developed quantitative PCR assay to quantify malarial parasitaemia. We found that males with an enlarged brood had significantly higher level of malarial parasites and lower red blood cell resistance to free radicals than males rearing control and reduced broods. Brood size manipulation did not affect female parasitaemia, although females with an enlarged brood had lower red blood cell resistance than females with control and reduced broods. However, for both sexes, there was no relationship between the level of parasitaemia and resistance to oxidative stress, suggesting a twofold cost of reproduction. Our results thus suggest the presence of two proximate and independent mechanisms for the well-documented trade-off between current reproductive effort and parental survival