0000000000496797
AUTHOR
M Lo Valvo
First record of brown long-eared bat Plecotus auritus (Chiroptera: Vespertilionidae) for Sicily island (Italy)
The knowledge of the bat fauna of Sicily (Southern Italy) is scarce, fragmentary or sometimes even confusing. A recent review mentioned 20 species for the region, but it is likely that the checklist of bats of Sicily is still far from being exhaustive. To help fill this gap, in the past few years specific studies were carried out on the distribution of bat species in Sicily, especially in the woodlands of the Nebrodi Mountains. In the municipality of Caronia (Messina province) has captured a young female brown long-eared bat Plecotus auritus (Linneaus, 1758). The capture of P. auritus in Sicily represents the first record of brown long-eared bat Plecotus auritus for Sicily island, an intere…
Record of a 10-year old European Wildcat Felis silvestris silvestris Schreber, 1777 (Mammalia: Carnivora: Felidae) from Mt. Etna, Sicily, Italy
Longevity data for wild felids are lacking in the literature. Here we report a camera trap recapture of a European Wildcat Felis silvestris at Mt. Etna in Sicily, Italy after nine years. This individual was clearly identifiable as its tail ended with a white ring rather than the typical black ring and had a unique shape of the dorsal stripe. At first capture on 26 May 2009, this cat was assessed as an adult, so that the likely minimum age of this individual at the time of recapture on 10 June 2018 must have been be at least 10 years. This finding represents the oldest known European Wildcat in the wild and provides insight into age structure in wildcat populations.