Version 1
: Received: 17 October 2023 / Approved: 17 October 2023 / Online: 18 October 2023 (05:20:30 CEST)
How to cite:
Massa, B. Origin and Long-Term Trend of Italian Breeding Forest Birds in the Mediterranean Context. Preprints2023, 2023101123. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202310.1123.v1
Massa, B. Origin and Long-Term Trend of Italian Breeding Forest Birds in the Mediterranean Context. Preprints 2023, 2023101123. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202310.1123.v1
Massa, B. Origin and Long-Term Trend of Italian Breeding Forest Birds in the Mediterranean Context. Preprints2023, 2023101123. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202310.1123.v1
APA Style
Massa, B. (2023). Origin and Long-Term Trend of Italian Breeding Forest Birds in the Mediterranean Context. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202310.1123.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Massa, B. 2023 "Origin and Long-Term Trend of Italian Breeding Forest Birds in the Mediterranean Context" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202310.1123.v1
Abstract
The author attempts to reconstruct the climatic vicissitudes of the Mediterranean to explain why only broadly distributed Eurasian forest species have penetrated the Mediterranean peninsulas. He has carried out a bibliographic survey of the status of breeding forest birds in Italy over 15 decades (1872-2022) in order to establish an objective long-term trend (stable, increasing, decreasing, etc.). The number of breeding forest birds in Italy amounts to 61; their distribution, with a few exceptions, indicates that they are widespread in Eurasia, but only a small percentage of Eurasian forest species have colonized Italy and the other Mediterranean peninsulas, namely 49 in Iberian, 61 in Italian and 64 in Balkan peninsulas; a small percentage of them (between 10.9 and 14.3%) belongs to trans-Saharan migrants. The similarity between the forest species on the three peninsulas (Iberian, Italian and Balkan) results between 0.45 and 0.48, indicating a certain differ-ence in the overall fauna on the three territories. Not all species have penetrated southwards into the three peninsulas; for example, some that stopped in the Italian Alps have instead arrived to the forests of Greece, at a latitude corresponding to southern Italy, or species that in Italy stopped in the northern Apennines in the other two peninsulas have instead arrived far south. Iberian peninsula and the island of Corsica hold three endemic species among breeding forest birds, Italian and Balkan peninsulas have not endemic species. Overall, the Mediterranean presently hosts mainly neo-endemic taxa among forest bird species; the only paleo-endemics can be considered the three species of nuthatches living in Corsica, Algeria, and Turkey (other than Caucasus and the islet of Lesvos) and Le Vaillant’s woodpecker in the Maghreb (North Africa). Italian forests cover ca. 40% of land surface and since 1980’ are increasing, but 22% of them do not have a natural origin. However, it is difficult to know the true increase of forests, because some of them are fired every year. The presence of some ecologically demanding forest birds depends on the age of the trees, permanent open spaces and other characteristics at the edge of woodland.
Keywords
list of breeding forest birds; distribution over 150 years; distribution limits; peninsulas; islands; influence of man; fires
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Forestry
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
