Acoustic communication conveys a variety of information that is a helpful tool for animal conservation. The wolf is an elusive species, which can be detected through the howls that individuals emit. In this study we investigated the acoustic features of wild wolf pack howls from five locations in the province of Arezzo, Italy. We tested the hypothesis that each group had a distinctive vocal signature. Our results showed that these wolf packs emitted howls with significantly distinctive acoustic structures. We hypothesized that group-specific vocal signatures require temporal stability to be functional. Indeed, we did not find any statistical differences in howls collected from the same location during the same season or for 2 consecutive years. We suggest that the acoustic features of howls can be used to distinguish wolf packs in the wild.

Balancing foraging gain and predation risk is a fundamental trade-off in the life of animals. Individual strategies to acquire, process, store and use information to solve cognitive tasks are likely to affect speed and flexibility of learning, and ecologically relevant decisions regarding foraging and predation risk. Theory suggests a functional link between individual variation in cognitive style and behaviour (animal personality) via speed-accuracy and risk-reward trade-offs. We tested whether cognitive style and personality affect risk-reward trade-off decisions posed by foraging and predation risk. We exposed 21 bank voles (Myodes glareolus) that were bold, fast learning and inflexible and 18 voles that were shy, slow learning and flexible to outdoor enclosures with different risk levels at two food patches. We quantified individual food patch exploitation, foraging and vigilance behaviour. Although both types responded to risk, fast animals increasingly exploited both food patches, gaining access to more food and spending less time searching and exercising vigilance. Slow animals progressively avoided high-risk areas, concentrating foraging effort in the low-risk one, and devoting >50% of visit to vigilance. These patterns indicate that individual differences in cognitive style/personality are reflected in foraging and anti-predator decisions that underlie the individual risk-reward bias.

Multidrug-resistant pathogens represent a serious threat to human health. The inefficacy of traditional antibiotic drugs could be surmounted through the exploitation of natural bioactive compounds of which medicinal plants are a great reservoir. The finding that bacteria living inside plant tissues, (i.e., the endophytic bacterial microbiome) can influence the synthesis of the aforementioned compounds leads to the necessity of unraveling the mechanisms involved in the determination of this symbiotic relationship. Here, we report the genome sequence of four endophytic bacterial strains isolated from the medicinal plant Origanum vulgare L. and able to antagonize the growth of opportunistic pathogens of cystic fibrosis patients. The in silico analysis revealed the presence of gene clusters involved in the production of antimicrobial compounds, such as paeninodin, paenilarvins, polymyxin, and paenicidin A. Endophytes’ adaptation to the plant microenvironment was evaluated through the analysis of the presence of antibiotic resistance genes in the four genomes. The diesel fuel degrading potential was also tested. Strains grew in minimum media supplemented with diesel fuel, but no n-alkanes degradation genes were found in their genomes, suggesting that diesel fuel degradation might occur through other steps involving enzymes catalyzing the oxidation of aromatic compounds.

Where allochthonous large mammals, such as the wild boars, occur in high density, human-wildlife conflicts may arise. Thus, assessing their spatio-temporal patterns is paramount to their management. We studied the wild boars on Elba island, Italy, where they have been introduced and are perceived as pests to address their occurrence and impact of foraging on natural habitat. We surveyed the western island with three camera trapping surveys within one year. We found that the species' estimated occupancy probability was higher in summer-autumn (0.75 ± 0.14) and winter-early spring (0.70 ± 0.10) than in spring–summer (0.53 ± 0.15), whereas detection probability did not vary. Occupancy was significantly associated with lower elevation and woodland cover. Lower site use of wild boars during spring–summer might reflect lower food availability in this season and/or boars’ movements towards landfarms outside the sampled area. Detectability increased with proximity to roads during spring–summer and decreased with humans’ relative abundance in other periods. Boars were mainly nocturnal, with decreasing overlap with human activity when human presence was higher in the park. Soil degradation caused by wild boars was higher in pine plantations, which is the cover with a lower conservation interest. The spatio-temporal activity of wild boars on the island appears driven by seasonal preferences for food-rich cover and avoidance of human disturbance. The lowered site use in months with lower resources could partially reflect increased proximity to settled and farmed areas, which may trigger crop-raiding and the negative perception by residents.

The parasitic insect Xenos vesparum induces noticeable behavioral and physiological changes—e.g. castration—in its female host, the paper wasp Polistes dominula: parasitized putative workers avoid any colony task and desert the colony to survive in the nearby vegetation, like future queens and males do. In this long-term observational study, we describe the spectacular attraction of parasitized workers towards trumpet creeper bushes (Campsis radicans) in early-summer. Two thirds of all wasps that we sampled on these bushes were parasitized, whereas the parasite prevalence was much lower in our study area and most wasps sampled on other nearby flowering bushes were non-parasitized. First, we describe the occurrence and consistency of this phenomenon across different sites and years. Second, we evaluate the spatial behavior of parasitized wasps on C. radicans bushes, which includes site-fidelity, exploitation and defense of rich extra-floral nectaries on buds and calices. Third, we record two critical steps of the lifecycle of X. vesparum on C. radicans: the parasite’s mating and a summer release of parasitic larvae, that can infect larval stages of the host if transported to the host’s nest. In a nutshell, C. radicans bushes provide many benefits both to the parasite X. vesparum and to its host: they facilitate the parasite’s mating and bivoltine lifecycle, a phenomenon never described before for this parasite, while, at the same time, they provide the wasp host with shelter inside trumpet flowers and extrafloral gland secretions, thus likely enhancing host survival and making it a suitable vector for the infection.

Seed-associated microbiota are believed to play a crucial role in seed germination, seedling establishment, and plant growth and fitness stimulation, due to the vertical transmission of a core microbiota from seeds to the next generations. It might be hypothesized that medicinal and aromatic plants could use the seeds as vectors to vertically transfer beneficial endophytes, providing plants with metabolic pathways that could influence phytochemicals production. Here, we investigated the localization, the structure and the composition of the bacterial endophytic population that resides in Origanum heracleoticum L. seeds. Endocellular bacteria, surrounded by a wall, were localized close to the aleurone layer when using light and transmission electron microscopy. From surface-sterilized seeds, cultivable endophytes were isolated and characterized through RAPD analysis and 16S RNA gene sequencing, which revealed the existence of a high degree of biodiversity at the strain level and the predominance of the genus Pseudomonas. Most of the isolates grew in the presence of six selected antibiotics and were able to inhibit the growth of clinical and environmental strains that belong to the Burkholderia cepacia complex. The endophytes production of antimicrobial compounds could suggest their involvement in plant secondary metabolites production and might pave the way to endophytes exploitation in the pharmaceutical field.