5 June 2017

On April 30, the first monitoring session of terrestrial invertebrates on Ventotene, Santo Stefano, Ponza and Palmarola was completed. The investigation was targeted towards gastropods and selected groups of arthropods, and it was completed in less than two weeks, despite accessing to Santo Stefano and Palmarola was complicated by the bad weather.

Andrea Benocci (Siena University) conducted the first tranche of surveys to obtain a first checklist of species of the islands and to evaluate the presence of predation by rats on edible species and other species of conservation interest. The data will be compared with those collected after rat eradication.

Gianluca Stasolla and Alberto F. Inghilesi focused instead on surveying land insects and other arthropods, such as spiders and isopods, by means of standardized sampling with vegetation mowing and pitfall traps. The aim is a qualitative and quantitative evaluation of arthropod biodiversity changes after the eradication of rats.

The material collected will be catalogued and identified by the experts in the next weeks, and it will provide useful information to evaluate the effectiveness of eradication measures.