0000000000136209

AUTHOR

Bruno Foggi

Plant invasions on small Mediterranean islands. An overview

Biological invasions have become one of the main drivers of habitat degradation and a leading cause of biodiversity loss in island ecosystems worldwide. The spread of invasive species poses a particular environmental threat on the islands of the Mediterranean Basin, which are hot spots of biodiversity and contain rare habitats and endemic species, especially on small islands, which are highly vulnerable to biodiversity loss. Following a recent survey, in this paper we aim to provide an overview of the present-day non-native vascular flora of small Mediterranean islands based on a sample of 37 islands located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Italy. By comparing the cu…

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Are Red Lists really useful for plant conservation? The New Red List of the Italian Flora in the perspective of national conservation policies

La nuova Lista Rossa della flora Italiana comprende tutte le "policy" specie italiane e altre specie di nota conservazione e comprende 400 taxa di cui il 65% sono minacciate di estinzione. La Lista Rossa si basa su un enorme data-set georeferenziato utile per gli scopi di conservazione. - The New Red List of the Italian Flora includes all the Italian policy species and other species of known conservation concerns for a total of 400 taxa, 65% of which are threatened with extinction. The Red List is based on a huge georeferenced data-set useful for conservation purposes. -

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Habitat type and island identity as drivers of community assembly in an archipelago

Aim: Ecoinformatics offer new opportunity to test islands as biogeographic and eco- logical models. In this paper we predicted three hypotheses: (1) plot-based data issu- ing from vegetation surveys can be used to predict Island Species-Area Relationships (ISARs) or island similarity; (2) the habitat area is an independent predictor of species richness patterns within island; (3) species richness and composition are more de- pendent on habitat type than island identity in land-bridge islands. Area: Tuscan Archipelago, Italy. Methods: We assembled a database of all the vegetation plots available for the archi- pelago. For the first hypothesis we calculated ISARs, using Arrhenius model, and B…

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Red Listing plants under full national responsibility: Extinction risk and threats in the vascular flora endemic to Italy

Abstract Taxa endemic to a country are key elements for setting national conservation priorities and for driving conservation strategies, since their persistence is entirely dependent on national policy. We applied the IUCN Red List categories to all Italian endemic vascular plants (1340 taxa) to assess their current risk of extinction and to highlight their major threats. Our results revealed that six taxa are already extinct and that 22.4% (300 taxa) are threatened with extinction, while 18.4% (247; especially belonging to apomictic groups) have been categorized as Data Deficient. Italian endemic vascular plants are primarily threatened by natural habitat modification due to agriculture, …

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Shedding light on typical species: Implications for habitat monitoring

Habitat monitoring in Europe is regulated by Article 17 of the Habitats Directive, which suggests the use of typical species to assess habitat conservation status. Yet, the Directive uses the term “typical” species but does not provide a definition, either for its use in reporting or for its use in impact assessments. To address the issue, an online workshop was organized by the Italian Society for Vegetation Science (SISV) to shed light on the diversity of perspectives regarding the different concepts of typical species, and to discuss the possible implications for habitat monitoring. To this aim, we inquired 73 people with a very different degree of expertise in the field of veget…

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Notulae To The Italian Native Vascular Flora: 11

In this contribution, new data concerning the distribution of native vascular flora in Italy are presented. It includes new records, confirmations, exclusions, and status changes to the Italian administrative regions. A new combination in the genus Pilosella is proposed. Nomenclatural and distribution updates, published elsewhere, and corrigenda are provided as Suppl. material 1.

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An updated checklist of the vascular flora native to Italy

AbstractAn updated inventory of the vascular flora alien to Italy, providing details on the occurrence at regional level, is presented. The checklist includes 1597 species, subspecies, and hybrids, distributed in 725 genera and 152 families; 2 taxa are lycophytes, 11 ferns and fern allies, 33 gymnosperms, and 1551 angiosperms. 157 taxa are archaeophytes and 1440 neophytes. The alien taxa currently established in Italy are 791 (570 naturalized and 221 invasive), while 705 taxa are casual aliens, 4 are not assessed, 7 are of unknown regional distribution, 47 have not been confirmed in recent times, 3 are considered extinct or possibly extinct in the country, and 40 are doubtfully occurring in…

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Notulae to the Italian native vascular flora: 7

In this contribution, new data concerning the distribution of native vascular flora in Italy are presented. It includes new records, confirmations and status changes to the Italian administrative regions for taxa in the generaAcer,Alchemilla,Andrachne,Bromus,Clinopodium,Colchicum,Damasonium,Erodium,Festuca,Hieracium,Hyparrhenia,Ipomoea,Linaria,Lolium,Narcissus,Ranunculus,Sisymbrium,Stipa,Valerianella,Vicia, andZannichellia. New combinations in the genusZiziphora(Z.sardoaandZ.corsica) and the new subspeciesUlmusminorsusbp.canescensare proposed. Furthermore, the name Calaminthaalpinavar.sardoa is here lectotypified. Nomenclatural and distribution updates, published elsewhere, and corrigenda a…

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IDPlanT: the Italian database of plant translocation

IDPlanT is the Italian Database of Plant Translocation, an initiative of the Nature Conservation Working Group of the Italian Botanical Society. IDPlanT currently includes 185 plant translocations. The establishment of a national database on plant translocation is a key step forward in data sharing and techniques improvement in this field of plant conservation. Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/11263504.2021.1985004.

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Plant invasion risk inside and outside protected areas: Propagule pressure, abiotic and biotic factors definitively matter

Invasive alien species are among the main global drivers of biodiversity loss posing major challenges to nature conservation and to managers of protected areas. The present study applied a methodological framework that combined invasive Species Distribution Models, based on propagule pressure, abiotic and biotic factors for 14 invasive alien plants of Union concern in Italy, with the local interpretable model-agnostic explanation analysis aiming to map, evaluate and analyse the risk of plant invasions across the country, inside and outside the network of protected areas. Using a hierarchical invasive Species Distribution Model, we explored the combined effect of propagule pressure, abiotic …

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Red list of threatened vascular plants in Italy

Italy has a rich natural heritage, which is dangerously under pressure. In recent years, there is an increased awareness of the crucial role of plants in ecosystem functioning and in providing ecosystem services. Consequently, an updated Red List of the Italian vascular flora was compiled in this work, at the request of the Ministry for Environment, Land and Sea Protection, with the scientific support of the Italian Botanical Society. The IUCN Red List criteria were applied to 2,430 Italian native vascular plant taxa to assess their current extinction risk and to highlight the major threats affecting the Italian flora. Our results revealed that 54 taxa (2.2% of the assessed taxa) are extinc…

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Is legal protection sufficient to ensure plant conservation? The Italian Red List of policy species as a case study

AbstractThe conservation of species listed in the Bern Convention and European Directive 1992/43/EEC (so-called policy species) is mandatory for European Union (EU) countries. We assessed the conservation status of Italian policy species, based on the IUCN categories and criteria, to evaluate the effectiveness of existing protection measures at the national level. Among the 203 vascular plants, bryophytes and lichens evaluated, 41.9% are categorized as threatened, and one is already extinct, indicating that the protection measures for policy species are inadequate. Our results for the Italian policy species are consistent with those of an assessment at the EU level. Conservation priorities …

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Proposals for improvement of Annex I of Directive 92/43/ EEC: Central Italy

The main purpose of the 92/43/EEC Habitats Directive is to contribute to the conservation of biodiversity, understood as habitat types and species of the flora and fauna of the European Union. To achieve this goal, natural and semi-natural biodiversity as a whole must be recognized and included in its annexes. As for the conservation of biotopes, named habitat types, Italy is unfortunately lacking as it the Annex I does not include important ecosystems that are typical of its territory, rare for biogeographical reasons or threatened. Therefore, the opportunity to identify a first list of significant habitats for central Italy is discussed here. For each of the new proposed types (new habita…

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Supplementary material 1 from: Bartolucci F, Domina G, Andreatta S, Argenti C, Bacchetta G, Ballelli S, Banfi E, Barberis D, Barberis G, Bedini G, Bolpagni R, Bonali F, Bovio M, Briozzo I, Brusco A, Caldarella O, Campus G, Cancellieri L, Carotenuto L, Cheli E, Dagnino D, Del Guacchio E, Farris E, Ferretti G, Filibeck G, Foggi B, Gabellini A, Galasso G, Gianguzzi L, Gottschlich G, Gubellini L, Hofmann N, Iamonico D, Laface VLA, Lonati M, Lucarini D, Lupoletti J, Marchianò R, Marenzi P, Martignoni M, Mei G, Menini F, Merli M, Musarella CM, Orsenigo S, Peccenini S, Pennesi R, Peruzzi L, Pica A, Pinzani L, Piovesan G, Pittarello M, Podda L, Ravetto Enri S, Roma-Marzio F, Rosati L, Spampinato G, Stinca A, Tonelli S, Trenchi M, Turcato C, Viciani D, Lastrucci L (2021) Notulae to the Italian native vascular flora: 11. Italian Botanist 11: 77-92. https://doi.org/10.3897/italianbotanist.11.68048

Supplementary data

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Supplementary material 1 from: Bartolucci F, Domina G, Alessandrini A, Angiolini C, Ardenghi NMG, Bacchetta G, Banfi E, Bolpagni R, Bonari G, Bräuchler C, Calvia G, Cancellieri L, Cannucci S, Carruggio F, Conti F, Cavallaro V, Fanfarillo E, Ferretti G, Festi F, Fiaschi T, Foggi B, Forte L, Fröhner SE, Galasso G, Gestri G, Gottschlich G, Labadessa R, Lastrucci L, Lazzaro L, Mereu G, Morabito A, Mugnai M, Musarella CM, Orsenigo S, Pazienza G, Pennesi R, Peruzzi L, Pierini B, Podda L, Prosser F, Rossi G, Scoppola A, Spampinato G, Stinca A, Tomaselli V, Zangari G, Nepi C (2019) Notulae to the Italian native vascular flora: 7. Italian Botanist 7: 125-148. https://doi.org/10.3897/italianbotanist.7.36148

: Data type: species data

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IDPlanT: the Italian database of plant translocation

IDPlanT is the Italian Database of Plant Translocation, an initiative of the Nature Conservation Working Group of the Italian Botanical Society. IDPlanT currently includes 185 plant translocations. The establishment of a national database on plant translocation is a key step forward in data sharing and techniques improvement in this field of plant conservation. Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/11263504.2021.1985004 .

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