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Antonino Puglisi

  • Biodiversity Journal, 15 (2): 205-210 - MONOGRAPH

    Antonino Puglisi
    Three days at school with FAST
    https://doi.org/10.31396/Biodiv.Jour.2024.15.2.205.210

    ABSTRACT
    “Three days at school with FAST” is the name of the environmental education project included within the FAST (Fight Alien Species Transborder), Project Interreg Italy-Malta. The FAST Project aims to record the entry and spread of non-native animal and plant species; and even more so those invasive species capable of reducing biodiversity in the islands of Sicily and Malta, located in the center of the Mediterranean basin. Furthermore, an important part of the project concerns dissemination, raising awareness among the community about alien species, the problems associated with them and the protection of biodiversity. Environmental education in schools (today considered an important form of dissemination of good practices) is the focus of the three days at school with FAST. An attempt was made to give the youngest elementary and middle school students tangible experiences, to teach them useful practices for the protection of nature by explaining, for the purposes of greater knowledge and awareness, environmental issues and problems linked to the most well-known and widespread alien species in Sicily, Thanks to the game and the experiences proposed in the three scheduled meetings, the aim is to enhance and at the same time learn to protect local environmental resources.

  • Biodiversity Journal, 13 (3): 0613-0616 - MONOGRAPH

    Vera D’Urso, Antonino Puglisi, Rosario Grasso & Maria Teresa Spena
    Notes on the Sicilian cave-dwelling species of Auchenorrhyncha (Insecta Rhynchota)
    https://doi.org/10.31396/Biodiv.Jour.2022.13.3.613.616

    ABSTRACT
    Up to now, there are very few species of troglobitic Auchenorrhyncha identified for Europe outside the Macaronesian region belonging to the Cixiidae family. From the biospeleological point of view, Sicily is a very interesting island because the presence of both limestone caves and lava tubes that allow a variety of specialized taxa belonging to different groups of Invertebrates. Concerning Auchenorrhyncha, at least two obligately cave-dwelling species belonging to Ibleocixius D’Urso et Grasso, 2009 and Cixius Latreille, 1804 genera inhabit the Sicilian caves. Ibleocixius is a troglobitic genus, endemic from Sicily with a unique species, Ibleocixius dunae, living in a limestone cave of the Hyblean plateau (South-eastern Sicily). Recently, a new troglobitic taxon (under description) has been found in some lava tubes on the Etna volcano; it belongs to Cixius genera, to C. pallipes-wagneri group. Both taxa live on the roots that penetrate the caves. They have a different palaeogeographic history. Ibleocixius dunae is a paleoendemic taxon showing strong degree of troglomorphy, and the genus differs from Cixius and related taxa in a different arrangement of several characters which are also present in other taxa. Cixius n. sp. is a neoendemic taxon showing morphological characters close to those of the epigean species Cixius wagneri sensu Holzinger et al. (2003).