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Roberto A. Pantaleoni

  • Biodiversity Journal, 9 (4): 447-450

    Laura Loru, Piera M. Marras, Mauro Nannini & Roberto A. Pantaleoni
    The occult spread of the invasive brown marmorated stink bug, Halyomorpha halys (Stål,1855) (Hemiptera Pentatomidae), in Sardinia (Italy)
    https://doi.org/10.31396/Biodiv.Jour.2018.9.4.447.450

    ABSTRACT
    The invasive brown marmorated stink bug, Halyomorpha halys (Stål, 1855) (Hemiptera Pentatomidae), was recorded in autumn 2018 in Sassari (northern Sardinia, Italy), after a previous finding in Cagliari (over 200 km away in southern Sardinia) in autumn 2016. It is not clear whether the species has already spread throughout the Sardinia or whether the sighting in the North of Sardinia is due to a second introduction. However, it is usual for this species to have a long period with low population level after its first introduction into a new area. The presence of this very polyphagous alien species is a serious hazard for Sardinian agriculture.

  • Biodiversity Journal, 5 (2): 221-224

    Laura Loru, Xenia Fois, Saminathan Vangily Ramasani, Leonarda Fadda & Roberto A. Pantaleoni
    An innovative, low-cost, small-scale rearing method forgreen-lacewings (Neuroptera Chrysopidae)

    ABSTRACT
    In this paper we describe an innovative, low-cost, small-scale green lacewing (Neuroptera Chrysopidae) rearing method developed in our laboratories over a decade. The main simplifications of our method are represented by the replacement of a yeast-fructose liquid diet for adults with bee pollen loads and by the use of Tenebrio molitor Linnaeus, 1758 larvae (Coleoptera Tenebrionidae) as factitious prey for larvae. Moreover almost all the components of the rearing cages derive from common cheap materials which can be easily assembled by anybody. Our method proves to be adaptable from a small laboratory to a local farmer’s insectary and its innovative aspects could be adopted in (and/or adapted to) mass rearing systems.

  • Biodiversity Journal, 5 (1): 087-091

    Giovanni Onore, Davide Badano & Roberto A. Pantaleoni
    Heliographic signalling in Haploglenius Burmeister, 1839 (Neuroptera Ascalaphidae)

    ABSTRACT
    The males of the ascalaphid genus Haploglenius are equipped with a movable pronotal flap, covering a white thoracic membrane, whose function remains poorly known. Few recent original observations, conducted on undisturbed specimens in their natural environment, suggest that this structure is part of a complex visual communication system based on intermittently showing the bright, reflecting, thoracic white area on a dark background. This behaviour is probably associated with courtship.

  • Biodiversity Journal, 5 (1): 001-002
    Hock Ping Guek & Roberto A. Pantaleoni
    The genus Ankylopteryx Brauer, 1864 (Neuroptera Chrysopidae)
  • Biodiversity Journal, 4 (1): 179-182

    Roberto A. Pantaleoni, Davide Badano, Ulrike Aspöck & Horst Aspöck
    Ascalaphus festivus (Rambur, 1842) in Sardinia, a new genus of Ascalaphidae for Europe (Neuroptera)

    ABSTRACT
    Ascalaphus festivus (Rambur, 1842), a widespread polytypic species in Africa and Middle East, was collected for the first time in southern Sardinia in the 1990s in two independent occasions. Subsequent specific surveys proved the existence of a stable breeding population in at least one coastal locality of Sardinia, thus allowing to fully consider this genus a member of the European fauna.

  • Biodiversity Journal, 3 (4): 445-458

    Rinaldo Nicoli Aldini, Agostino Letardi & Roberto A. Pantaleoni
    State of the art on Neuropterida of Sicily and Malta

    ABSTRACT
    Sicily, the largest Mediterranean island, is surrounded by many small islands (Aeolian Islands, Ustica, Aegadian Islands, Pantelleria, Linosa, Lampedusa, Maltese Islands), some of which forming archipelagoes. The authors, after a historical sketch of the research on Neuropterida in Sicily (sensu lato), analyze the biodiversity of the area, highlighting the species richness and providing an up-to-date check-list. The lack of knowledge on some of the most paradigmatic communities of Neuropterida is discussed in relation to their various habitats. The distributional patterns of Sicilian Neuropterida are interpreted in order to obtain a biogeographical characterization of the area. It is confirmed that the location of Sicily and its surrounding islands forms a bridge between north and south and a door from the W Mediterranean region to the oriental Mediterranean basin.

  • Biodiversity Journal, 3 (4): 297-310

    Roberto A. Pantaleoni, Carlo Cesaroni, C. Simone Cossu, Salvatore Deliperi, Leonarda Fadda, Xenia Fois, Andrea Lentini, Achille Loi, Laura Loru, Alessandro Molinu, M. Tiziana Nuvoli, Wilson Ramassini, Antonio Sassu, Giuseppe Serra & Marcello Verdinelli
    Impact of alien insect pests on Sardinian landscape and culture

    ABSTRACT
    Geologically Sardinia is a raft which, for just under thirty million years, has been crossing the western Mediterranean, swaying like a pendulum from the Iberian to the Italian Peninsula. An island so large and distant from the other lands, except for its “sister” Corsica, has inevitably developed an autochthonous flora and fauna over such a long period of time. Organisms from other Mediterranean regions have added to this original contingent. These new arrivals were not randomly distributed over time but grouped into at least three great waves. The oldest two correspond with the Messinian salinity crisis about 7 million years ago and with the ice age, when, in both periods, Sardinia was linked to or near other lands due to a fall in sea level. The third, still in progress, is linked to human activity. Man has travelled since ancient times and for many centuries introduced allochthonous species to Sardinia which radically modified the native flora and fauna, but always at a very slow and almost unnoticeable rate.
    The use of sailing or rowing boats, with their low speeds, hindered the transport of living organisms from one place to another. The use of the steam boat, introduced around 1840 but widely diffuse around 1870-1880, opened the doors to more frequent arrivals and also to organisms from the American Continent. This technical innovation had an influence over the whole world economy, with its well-known grain crisis, and coincided in Sardinia with the arrival of Roman dairymen, producers of pecorino cheese and the beginning of the expansion of sheep farming which would continue uninterrupted until the present day. In this period of sudden social and environmental change, an insect was introduced which would turn out to be probably the most economically devastating agricultural pest in Europe: the Grape oxera. The vineyard and wine business collapsed first in France then in Italy. The oxera arrived in Sardinia in 1883 and wine production crashed a very short time later and only resumed after the distribution of American vine rootstock at the beginning of the 20th Century. From then, vine cultivation in Europe was modified with the essential use of this rootstock.
    Since then methods of transport have increased enormously in number and speed. The number of allochthonous and invasive species has increased proportionally: some of them along with exotic plants which are cultivated on the island, others following man in his activities. Often these new pests attack and destroy ornamental plants which have become part of the Sardinian landscape, causing it to change; just as often their presence requires methods of pest management which are different from the traditional methods on specific crops; finally in at least one case (the Asian tiger mosquito) they pose a threat to our health.

  • Biodiversity Journal, 3 (2): 132-136

    Rinaldo Nicoli Aldini & Roberto A. Pantaleoni
    Zephyr’s wings: Tiepolo’s imagination or the antlion Pseudimares Kimmins,1933 (Neuroptera, Myrmeleontidae) as his model?

    ABSTRACT
    When Giambattista Tiepolo, in his painting ‘Triumph of Zephyr and Flora’, gave Zephyr dragonfly-like wings with eyespots, was he inspired by pure imagination or did he have an insect he had previously seen in mind: the rare and astonishing Pseudimares? It is impossible to be sure. The authors of the present note point out the innovatory characteristic of the pictorial arrangement adopted by Tiepolo for the wings, compared with stylistic elements which were fashionable before and during his epoch, and suggest the reasons why we cannot rule out that the artist could have been inspired by a model, a specimen of Pseudimares, two centuries before the scientific discovery of this very rare antlion, at present only known from Iran and Morocco. A short account is provided on the bio-ecological significance of the eyespots found on insect wings.

  • Biodiversity Journal, 3 (2): 129-131

    Roberto A. Pantaleoni, Gabriel Martínez del Mármol Marín & Raúl León Vigara
    Second record of Pseudimares aphrodite H. Aspöck et U. Aspöck, 2009 (Neuroptera, Myrmeleontidae)

    ABSTRACT
    Some adults of Pseudimares aphrodite H. Aspöck et U. Aspöck, 2009 were observed and photographed while attracted by light in Southern Morocco, in August 2009 and 2011. Only the typus of this species, a male, was known previously from South Morocco too. Moreover the genus Pseudimares Kimmins, 1933 is perhaps the most enigmatic taxon among Neuroptera Myrmeleontidae. Its second species Pseudimares iris Kimmins, 1933 from Southern Iran is known also only in the type series, a male and a female. What little information we know about Pseudimares is reported.

  • Biodiversity Journal, 2 (4): 207-208

    Roberto A. Pantaleoni & Mario Boni Bartalucci
    New record of Tentyria Latreille, 1802 (Coleoptera, Tenebrionidae) as host of Poecilotiphia rousselii (Guérin, 1838) (Hymenoptera, Tiphiidae)

    ABSTRACT
    An attack of Poecilotiphia rousselii (Guérin, 1838) (Hymenoptera Tiphiidae Myzininae Meriini) on a larva of Tentyria Latreille, 1802 (Coleoptera Tenebrionidae) is reported from sand dunes of Porto Ferro (Sassari, NW-Sardinia, Italy). Only one previous record of Meriini hosts is known and it also regarded a larva of Tentyria.

  • Biodiversity Journal, 12 (2): 0297-0300

    Fabio Cianferoni, Maria Roggero, Roberto A. Pantaleoni & Laura Loru
    Nagusta goedelii (Kolenati, 1857) (Hemiptera Heteroptera Reduviidae) in Sardinia: human-mediated dispersal aids this species to spread west
    https://doi.org/10.31396/Biodiv.Jour.2021.12.2.297.300

    ABSTRACT
    This note reports the first finding of the reduviid bug Nagusta goedelii (Kolenati, 1857) in Sardinia and is first ascertained case of the human-mediated introduction of this species. In fact, Nagusta goedelii is showing an expansion of its geographical range from the east to the west, however the causes are still unknown and further studies are needed. A brief review of the European distribution of this species is given. An update of its regional occurrence in Italy, based on verified records available online, is also provided. The species was observed in co-occurrence with the invasive bug Halyomorpha halys (Stål, 1855), which would appear to be one of its possible predators.

  • Biodiversity Journal, 11 (4): 0969-0974

    Roberto Rattu, Roberto A. Pantaleoni & Rinaldo Nicoli Aldini
    Emergence trap for woodpile insects provides two interesting species of Neuropterida from Sardinia
    https://doi.org/10.31396/Biodiv.Jour.2020.11.4.969.974

    ABSTRACT
    An emergence trap for woodpile insects, assembled in the coppice holm oak forest of San Gregorio (SE-Sardinia), captured few specimens of only two species of Neuropterida, but these were very interesting ones: Isoscelipteron glaserellum (U. Aspöck, H. Aspöck et Hölzel, 1979) (Neuroptera Berothidae), new to Italy, and Dendroleon pantherinus (Fabricius, 1787) (Neuroptera Myrmeleontidae), new to Sardinia. Further specimens of both species were collected at the same site using other methods. An old find of Dendroleon pantherinus, previously considered unreliable, was confirmed. The ecology and rarity of both species are discussed.