0000000000076841
AUTHOR
Laura Zanca
showing 6 related works from this author
Climate Effects on Breeding Phenology of Peregrine and Lanner Falcons in the Mediterranean
2022
We explored the effects of weather on the timing and reproduction of the Mediterranean Peregrine Falcon Falco peregrinus brookei and the Lanner Falcon F. biarmicus feldeggii living on the Mediterranean island of Sicily. We found that the start date of incubation has changed during 1979–2019 and analysed whether incubation timing affected the productivity of both populations and whether the change of incubation date and the quality of breeding sites depended on climatic conditions. Overall spring temperature and rainfall increased on Sicily and the incubation date of the Peregrine and the Lanner Falcon has shifted to be about one week later over the time period 1979 to 2019. Linear mixed mod…
Food for flight: pre-migratory dynamics of the Lesser Kestrel Falco naumanni.
2014
Capsule The post-reproductive stage of Lesser Kestrel is crucial for migratory fuelling and survival. Aims To describe the summer pre-migratory ecology of the Lesser Kestrel in Sicily and review existing data in Southern Europe. Methods We identified the main summer roosts and then made roost counts every ten days from 2010 to 2012. We used case-sensitive modelling procedures to detect biases in counts (generalized linear mixed models), assess the annual population trends from 2005 to 2012 (TRends and Indices for Monitoring); and to model habitat preferences (generalized linear model). We sampled pellets to describe the birds’ diet during the peak month prior to migration. Results We discov…
Insular variation in central MediterraneanCrociduraWagler, 1832 (Mammalia, Soricidae)
1990
Morphometric variation of Crocidura mandible in Sicily and surrounding islands (Egadi archipelago, Ustica, Pantelleria and Gozo) was analyzed by principal component and canonical variate analyses in order to integrate recent chromosomal and biochemical observations. Specimens of C. suaveolens and C. leucodon from mainland Italy and of C. russula from Sardinia were used as reference in this analysis. The biometry of the only taxon of shrews living in Sicily is significantly different from the three reference samples. This result, coupled with a recently discovered new karyotype, provides strong evidence for a new Eurasian species, for which the name C. sicula Miller 1901, was chosen. Crocidu…
Metric discrimination and distribution of the species of Crocidura occuring in Tunisia
1992
A recent paper on the occurrence of the genus Crocidura in Tunisia reports a single specimen identified as C. suaveolens. Therefore a third species, besides C. russula and C. whitakeri would occur in the country. However, the presence of C. suaveolens in North-Africa is controversial and was recently ruled out from the other Maghrebi countries (Algieria and Morocco). During the period 1989-90, 71 specimens of shrews were collected from owls pellets or trapped at Tunisian 12 sites. This material was measured and studied both by classic morphometric and multivariate methods (Fuzzy test, Principal Coordinate Analysis and Generalized Procrustes Analysis), considering also reference samples (C. …
Effects of Nest and Colony Features on Lesser Kestrel (Falco naumanni) Reproductive Success
2012
The Lesser Kestrel is a facultative colonial raptor mostly breeding in man-made structures. During 2009-2011 we checked the fate of 545 nests found in 18 colonies located in south-eastern Sicily. We determined the reproductive success of breeding pairs by analysing the survival time of each egg to hatching ( n = 2,495) and each nestling to fledging ( n = 1,849) with the linear hazard model of survival times. We determined whether egg and nestling survival differed between years with a Gehan–Wilcoxon test. By Cox regressions, we related the survival times with nest and colony features. Egg and nestling survival times showed a strong annual effect. The two reproductive stages of the Lesser K…
Broad-front migration leads to strong migratory connectivity in the lesser kestrel (Falco naumanni)
2019
Aim: Migratory animals regularly move between often distant breeding and non‐breeding ranges. Knowledge about how these ranges are linked by movements of individuals from different populations is crucial for unravelling temporal variability in population spatial structuring and for identifying environmental drivers of population dynamics acting at different spatio‐temporal scales. We performed a large‐scale individual‐based migration tracking study of an Afro‐Palaearctic migratory raptor, to determine the patterns of migratory connectivity of European breeding populations. Location: Europe, Africa. Methods: Migration data were recorded using different devices (geolocators, satellite transmi…