0000000001141343
AUTHOR
Salvatore Alessandro Barra
Una nuova popolazione isolata di xenopo liscio in Sicilia sud-occidentale
African clawed frog is a sub-saharan native anuran that has been introduced in various states of the old and the new world. The only Italian population of this species is located in western Sicily, and it is known as the European clawed frog population with wider distribution area. This paper describes a new Sicilian population of this species, and sets out to verify the effective isolation from the currently known distribution. The new site is a disused swimming pool, located near the mouth of the Belice River (province of Trapani), 31 km away from the nearest edge of the African clawed frog distribution area. To test whether this new population is the result of natural expansion of its ra…
Diversity and taxonomy of the genus Unio Philipsson in Italy, with the designation of a neotype for Unio elongatulus C. Pfeiffer (Mollusca, Bivalvia, Unionidae)
Novel Unio spp. populations from Slovenia, the Italian peninsula, Sardinia and Sicily were genetically analysed in order to define the distribution and diversity of the genus Unio in Italy and neighbouring areas. The presence of two primarily allopatric autochtonous species, Unio elongatulus Pfeiffer, and Unio mancus Lamarck, is confirmed for the Italian peninsula, Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily. Autochthonous populations of Unio elongatulus are present in the peri-Adriatic drainages of the Italian and Balkan peninsulas, south as far as the Ofanto River (Apulia, Italy) and Lake Skadar (Albania), while its presence in the Tyrrhenian rivers of Tuscany is likely due to anthropogenic introductio…