The simplification of agricultural landscapes that has occurred in recent decades has led to a consequent decline in biodiversity. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of cultivated and semi-natural areas to sustain the beta diversity of nocturnal Lepidoptera. A dataset available for an organic century-old olive farm was analysed. Sampling was carried out from July 2018 to June 2019 within eight sites. The beta diversity was explored using the Bray–Curtis quantitative similarity index. To assess the main process driving community composition, two measures of nestedness were calculated. The analyses showed that most species were more abundant in semi-natural sites, although some species were found to be barycentric or exclusive to the olive groves. The nestedness at farm and site scales confirmed that the main process driving the composition of the moth community was species impoverishment, but this process was not found to be significant when comparisons involved herbaceous semi-natural habitats and cultivated sites. We found out that the contribution of olive groves to the farm beta diversity was small but non-negligible. To improve the sustainable management of an olive grove, it is preferable to promote the presence of tree-covered areas since semi-natural herbaceous cover can be represented within the farm by low-input olive groves.

Cultivated and suburban areas are usually considered unfavourable to the vulnerable components of biodiversity and regarded as not interesting from a conservation point of view. However, remnants of semi-natural vegetation can be embedded in such areas, becoming possible refuges for wild biodiversity despite the high anthropogenic pressures. With the present study, we raise awareness that, in some cases, these areas can be regarded as biodiversity treasure chests, even when apparently poor and with low appeal for conservationists. We demonstrate the importance of urbanised and cultivated landscapes by providing new records of two lepidopteran species rare for the Italian Peninsula, namely Amphipyra (Pyrois) cinnamomea and Boudinotiana notha. The European range of A. cinnamomea has become strongly reduced, seeming extinct in some Central European regions and the few Italian records mostly date back several decades. B. notha has very few relict populations in Mediterranean Europe, some of which are in peninsular Italy, where it is threated by urbanisation and reduced precipitations expected in the next decades. Our findings confirm the importance of small and highly fragmented patches of semi-natural vegetation for biodiversity conservation, as they can allow species of conservation interest to persist in hostile lands.

The availability of data regarding local and regional biodiversity inventories are gaining an increasing importance because of the lack of basic knowledge makes difficult to study ecological dynamics promoted by environmental and climatic changes. In this paper we demonstrate that to prioritize the exploration of extreme habitats within underexplored territories accelerate the filling of faunistic gaps. We investigated the fauna of Lepidoptera of two areas in southern Italy characterized by extreme habitats: the Calanchi del Marchesato and the mouth of the Neto River, both located in the Calabria region, Crotone province, a territory with scarce and occasional faunistic investigations. After only one year of monthly surveys, we found 22 species of biogeographical interest at both national and regional levels. Eupithecia lentiscata was discovered in the Italian peninsula for the first time, previously recorded only in Sardinia so far, and E. phoeniceata was found for the first time in southern part of continental territory, being known in Italy only for Tuscany, Umbria, Latium, Abruzzo, and Sicily. Seven more species are new for the regional fauna. Furthermore, we also found seven abundant populations of usually rare species, and six more species were confirmed as rare at regional level. For any of these species we provided a measure of filled gaps. These results, also improved the knowledge concerning two Natura 2000 sites, providing insights on their management. To maximise results minimising field efforts and costs, it is very important to carefully select the study areas.

Landscape configuration and forest structure assume an increasing importance as determinants of animal communities. This paper focused on nocturnal Lepidoptera inhabiting alder patches in the Sila National Park, Italy. According to their shapes, patches were divided into linear and compact ones to disentangle the roles of forest structure and landscape configuration in determining the composition of nocturnal Lepidopteran communities at different observation scales. We used the Mann–Whitney test for medians and Shannon diversity, equitability, Fisher’s alpha, and nestedness to test differences among moth communities. We found that compact patches inhabited richer and more abundant communities. The abundance-based Correspondence Analysis showed moth communities clustered according to woodlot shape, except a compact woodlot with a linear-like moth community because it was entirely surrounded by grasslands. Percentage of forested area and abundance and composition of communities were positively correlated at 50 and 200 m buffers, while correlations were absent at smaller and larger buffers. Our results demonstrated that a width of 50 m may not be sufficient to give proper functionality to the wooded area, at least for moths. As a consequence, planning of forest restorations should consider the importance of increasing the structural habitat continuity at larger scales.

In questo lavoro si riporta l’elenco dei macrolepidotteri notturni raccolti nel 2019 nei pressi dell’Area Faunistica dei rapaci di Acquaformosa, una struttura ricadente nel Parco Nazionale del Pollino, Calabria. Il monitoraggio è stato effettuato con l’ausilio di una trappola luminosa a LED UV, attivata da giugno a dicembre, grazie alla quale sono state registrate 151 specie. Oltre a macroeteroceri con ampia valenza ecologica come Peribatodes rhomboidaria (Denis & Schiffermüller, 1775) e Phragmatobia fuliginosa (Linnaeus, 1758), il rinvenimento di alcune specie è connesso alla biologia larvale, come ad esempio Cabera pusaria (Linnaeus, 1758) e Selenia dentaria (Fabricius, 1775) i cui stadi preimmaginali sono legati a foreste miste di latifoglie. Si forniscono nuove segnalazioni dell’endemica Lemonia italiana (Prozorov, Prozorova, Volkova, Yakovlev, Nedoshivina, Pinzari, Pinzari, Scalercio, Bianco, Saldaitis, Hausmann, Revay, Müller, 2022) e di Euplagia quadripunctaria (Poda, 1761), specie di interesse comunitario oggetto di monitoraggi specifici da parte del Parco Nazionale del Pollino.

Tineidae Latreille, 1810 includes about 119 species in Italy. Despite their economic and ecological importance, this family remains poorly studied in peninsular Italy, primarily due to taxonomic impediment. The aims of this paper were to improve molecular reference libraries to overcome the taxonomic impediment and to increase the knowledge of Tineidae in South Italian forests. The examined material was collected from the southernmost tip of peninsular Italy. A total of 85 specimens were DNA barcoded, recovering 74 sequences and 27 Barcode Index Numbers of which three are new to the Barcode of Life Data system. 66 specimens were assigned to 24 species. 67% of these identified species represent new records for parts of Italy or for the entire country. Notably, Pelecystola fraudulentella (Zeller, 1852) is new for Italy, while Haplotinea insectella (Fabricius, 1794), Reisserita relicinella (Herrich-Schäffer, 1853), Stenoptinea cyaneimarmorella (Millière, 1854), Monopis neglecta Šumpich & Liška, 2011, and Triaxomera fulvimitrella (Sodoffsky, 1830) are new for South Italy. Additionally, 10 species are new for the Calabria region. The most interesting cases concern eight specimens belonging to the genera Nemapogon Schrank, 1802 and Neurothaumasia Le Marchand, 1934. These specimens exhibited genetic distance ranging of 3.74% and 6.73% respectively from their nearest neighbors and morphology of genitalia cannot help to assign them to a known species. Further taxonomic studies are needed to ascertain their taxonomy.