During winter months and early spring 2011, we observed symptoms of scattered twig mortality in two historical woody urban parks of Campania (Southern Italy), at Portici (Parco Gussone: 40°48’ N, 14°20’ E) and Naples (Parco di Capodimonte: 40°52’ N, 14°15’ E). The woods consist of mature holm oaks (Quercus ilex) with an understorey of evergreen Mediterranean shrubs, natural regeneration of oak and several ornamental species. The examined dry terminals of holm oak, collected in late March 2011, hosted adult females of an ambrosia beetle of the genus Xylosandrus Reitter. Here, we report the first European record of the black twig borer (BTB) Xylosandrus compactus (Eichhoff) reproducing on new host plants in Italy. Insect and twig sampling was conducted irregularly during spring and summer 2011. Infested twigs of different host plants were isolated in plastic tubes, new emerged or callow adults counted and sexed and other biological data recorded. Hundreds of specimens of BTB, (>700 females and 43 males) emerged from sampled twigs or were directly collected from reproductive galleries at both localities.

In Mediterranean countries, in the year 2017, extensive surfaces of forests were damaged by wildfires. In the Vesuvius National Park, multiple summer wildfires burned 88% of the Mediterranean forest. This unprecedented event in an environmentally vulnerable area suggests conducting spatial assessment of the mixed-severity fire effects for identifying priority areas and support decision-making in post-fire restoration. The main objective of this study was to compare the ability of the delta Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) spectral index obtained from Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2A satellites in retrieving burn severity levels. Burn severity levels experienced by the Mediterranean forest communities were defined by using two quali-quantitative field-based composite burn indices (FBIs), namely the Composite Burn Index (CBI), its geometrically modified version CBI (GeoCBI), and the dNBR derived from the two medium-resolution multispectral remote sensors. The accuracy of the burn severity map produced by using the dNBR thresholds developed by Key and Benson (2006) was first evaluated. We found very low agreement (0.15 < K < 0.21) between the burn severity class obtained from field-based indices (CBI and GeoCBI) and satellite-derived metrics (dNBR) from both Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2A. Therefore, the most appropriate dNBR thresholds were rebuilt by analyzing the relationships between two field-based (CBI and GeoCBI) and dNBR from Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2A. By regressing alternatively FBIs and dNBRs, a slightly stronger relationship between GeoCBI and dNBR metrics obtained from the Sentinel-2A remote sensor (R² = 0.69) was found. The regressed dNBR thresholds showed moderately high classification accuracy (K = 0.77, OA = 83%) for Sentinel-2A, suggesting the appropriateness of dNBR-Sentinel 2A in assessing mixed-severity Mediterranean wildfires. Our results suggest that there is no single set of dNBR thresholds that are appropriate for all burnt biomes, especially for the low levels of burn severity, as biotic factors could affect satellite observations.

Organisms sharing the same habitats may differ in small‐scale microhabitat requirements or benefit from different management. In this study, set in Italy, we focused on two species of high conservation value, the cerambycid beetle Rosalia alpina and the bat Barbastella barbastellus, which often share the same forest areas and in several cases the same individual trees. We compared the potential distribution and, at two spatial scales, the niches between such species. The predicted distributions largely overlapped between the beetle and the bat. The niches proved to be similar on a broad scale, yet not on the plot one. Compared with B. barbastellus, R. alpina tends to occur at lower altitude in more irradiated sites with lower canopy closure and uses shorter trees with wider diameters. B. barbastellus occurred more often in trees within forest or along its edges, whereas R. alpina lays eggs in trees found in clearings. B. barbastellus plots were more frequent in forest, R. alpina plots in forested pasture and open‐shredded forest. Overall, exposure to sun influenced more critically site and tree selection by R. alpina, as a warm microclimate is essential for larval development. Although B. barbastellus reproduction may be favored by warmer roosting conditions, bats may also find such conditions in dense forest and in strongly irradiated cavities high up in tall trees that project above the canopy. We emphasize that subtle differences in the ecological requirements of syntopic taxa could be missed at broad scales, so multiple‐scale assessment is always advisable.