A new species of Tytonidae, Tyto mourerchauvireae, is described from the Sicilian cave deposits of Spinagallo, Luparello and Marasà, which have yielded a common vertebrate fossil assemblages referred to the early Middle Pleistocene. T. mourerchauvireae nov. sp. shows a pronounced increase in body size compared to other congeneric taxa. It is larger than the extant Tyto alba and the extinct Tyto...

Meladema Laporte, 1835 are relatively large, stream-dwelling diving beetles, distributed widely in the Western Palaearctic, from the Atlantic Islands to Turkey, and from southern France and the Balkans to the central Sahara. In addition to the three previously recognised taxa (M. coriacea Laporte, 1835, M. imbricata (Wollaston, 1871) and M. lanio (Fabricius, 1775)) we describe a new, cryptic, s...

Crematogaster (Crematogaster) jehovaevar.cypria Santschi, 1930 is raised to species rank. Two new, related species are described from the north-eastern part of the Mediterranean Basin: Crematogaster (Crematogaster) erectepilosasp. n. (Dodecanese, Greece) and Crematogaster (Crematogaster) gullukdagensissp. n. (Antalya Prov., Turkey). These three species are well distinguished from other species ...

The vegetation composition of a post-fke succession in Aleppo pine forests of Anica, Greece, was studied by a synchronic method. The sites form a post-fire chronosequence and have typical Mediterranean climate. Data on the flora of the burned sites, growth and life forms of the various plant taxa, as weU as on vegetation smcture are provided. The burned ecosystems recovered quite rapidly. Durin...

We identified hotspots of terrestrial vertebrate species diversity in Europe and adjacent islands. Moreover, we assessed the extent to which by the end of the 21(st) century such hotspots will be exposed to average monthly temperature and precipitation patterns which can be regarded as extreme if compared to the climate experienced during 1950-2000. In particular, we considered the entire Europ...

Analysis of sequence data from the internal transcribed spacers (ITS) and 5.8S region of nuclear ribosomal DNA show that Canarian and Madeiran brooms (Genisteae) of the genera Teline, Adenocarpus, and Genista are related to Mediterranean species and not to species from adjacent parts of Morocco. Each separate colonization of the islands has resulted in contrasting patterns of adaptation and rad...

BACKGROUND A challenge within the context of cryptic species is the delimitation of individual species within the complex. Statistical parsimony network analytics offers the opportunity to explore limits in situations where there are insufficient species-specific morphological characters to separate taxa. The results also enable us to explore the spread in taxa that have invaded globally. MET...

We analysed the spatial patterns in macroinvertebrate taxon richness and abundance at two scales: sampling unit and basin. We sampled 12 stream sites in three zones of Portugal, differing in climate geomorphology and water chemistry. At a sampling unit scale, substratum organic matter content, depth and the dominant size of substratum particles were correlated with numbers of taxa and individua...

The Macaronesian laurel forests (MLF) are dominated by trees with a laurophyll habit comparable to evergreen humid forests which were scattered across Europe and the Mediterranean in the Paleogene and Neogene. Therefore, MLF are traditionally regarded as an old, 'Tertiary relict' vegetation type. Here we address the question if key taxa of the MLF are relictual. We evaluated the relict hypothes...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS The olive (Olea europaea subsp. europaea) was domesticated in the Mediterranean area but its wild relatives are distributed over three continents, from the Mediterranean basin to South Africa and south-western Asia. Recent studies suggested that this crop originated in the Levant while a secondary diversification occurred in most westward areas. A possible contribution of th...