Martellos Stefano

University of Trieste | UNITS · Department of Life Sciences

This paper, with Italy as a case-study, provides a general overview on the ecology of lichenicolous lichens, i.e. those which start their life-cycle on the thallus of other lichens. It aims at testing whether some ecological factors do exert a positive selective pressure on the lichenicolous lifestyle. The incidence of some biological traits (photo...

In the face of escalating biodiversity loss, the imperative role of comprehensive research and conservation strategies has never been morepressing. The National Biodiversity Future Centre (NBFC) in Italy stands at the forefront of tackling biodiversity loss, pioneering innovative approaches within the Mediterranean’s biodiversity hotspot. In this C...

Cross-taxon congruence, i.e., using certain taxonomic groups as surrogates for others, is receiving growing interest since it may allow decreasing efforts in biodiversity studies. In this work, we investigated the patterns of cross-taxon congruence in species richness and composition between communities of bryophytes, lichens, and vascular plants i...

The Dolichens project provides the first dynamic inventory of the lichens of the Dolomites (Eastern Alps, Italy). Occurrence records were retrieved from published and grey literature, reviewed herbaria, unpublished records collected by the authors, and new sampling campaigns, covering a period from 1820 to 2022. Currently, the dataset contains 56,2...

Calabria, the southernmost tip of the Italian Peninsula, is a biogeographically very interesting region for lichenologists, characterised by the abundance of oceanic and suboceanic species with subtropical affinities, but also by the presence of the southernmost outposts of several boreal species on the highest peaks. The lichen biota of Calabria,...

Protected areas (PAs) are a strategic tool for biodiversity conservation, and conservation planning approaches are used to optimize PAs capacity to preserve specific target groups. Orchidaceae is one of the most threatened plant families, as most species are vulnerable to habitat changes because of their strong ecological specialization. Italy play...

Aims Despite the research on orchid in insular conditions, few studies are focused on the spatial distribution of their reproductive syndromes across complex insular systems. By using island species–area relationships (ISAR), we explore orchid biogeography in the Central Western‐Mediterranean islands. In this study, we aim to investigate variation...

Small islands represent a common feature in the Mediterranean and host a significant fraction of its biodiversity. However, the distribution of plant species richness across spatial scales-from local communities (alpha) to whole islands (gamma)-is largely unknown, and so is the influence of environmental, geographical, and topographical factors. By...

The creation of a coordinated publishing and aggregation system of biodiversity data is a challenging task, which calls for the adoption of open data standards. ITALIC, the information system on Italian lichens, originated from the conversion of the first Italian checklist into a database. While the first version was “frozen”, the present version i...

The "Herbarium Universitatis Tergestinae" (TSB), with a total of ca. 50,000 specimens, includes the largest modern collection of lichens in Italy, with 25,796 samples collected from all over the country since 1984, representing 74% of all taxa known to occur in Italy. Almost all specimens have been georeferenced “a posteriori”. The dataset is avail...

Aim Assessing the performances of different sampling approaches for documenting community diversity may help to identify optimal sampling efforts and strategies, and to enhance conservation and monitoring planning. Here, we used two data sets based on probabilistic and preferential sampling schemes of Italian forest vegetation to analyze the multif...

In this contribution, new data concerning bryophytes, fungi and lichens of the Italian flora are presented. It includes new records and confirmations for the bryophyte genera Bryum , Cryphaea , Didymodon , and Grimmia ; the fungal genera Bryostigma , Cercidospora , Conocybe , Cortinarius , Endococcus , Inocybe , Psathyrella , and Sphaerellothecium...

Biomonitoring plays a crucial role in the assessment of air quality, as it allows to estimate the presence of pollutants, by measuring deviations from normality of the components of an ecosystem. Lichens are among the organisms most commonly used as bioindicators. The present study deals with the classification of lichen taxa from images, by means...

Volunteers’ contribution to research is growing, especially since the beginning of the 21st century. Given the constant increase of Citizen Science initiatives, recruiting strategies have to be planned properly. Retention is pivotal as well, especially when time is invested in volunteers’ training. However, practically no follow-up data are availab...

Scientific names are not part of everyday language in any modern country, and their input as strings in a query system can be easily associated with typographical errors. While globally unique identifiers univocally address a taxon name, they can hardly be used for querying a database manually. Thus, matching algorithms are often used to overcome m...

Work is in progress for the completion of a computer-aided key to all lichens known to occur in Italy, which will be freely available online, and as a free application for mobile devices. A first example, concerning the lichens of Northern Italy (2.339 infrageneric taxa), is already available online for testing. A computer-generated but manually ed...

This work provides an overview of the ecology of all bipartite cyanolichens of Italy, exploring the relationships between ecological factors and species traits. A matrix of 205 species and several ecological descriptors was subjected to multivariate analyses (classification and ordination). Six groups of species with similar ecology were delimited,...

The checklist of the Italian native and alien vascular flora, and a guide to Floritaly (Portal to the Flora of Italy). La checklist della flora vascolare autoctona e alloctona d'Italia e una guida a Floritaly (Portale della Flora d'Italia)

Digital data concerning the flora of Italy are largely fragmented among different resources hosted on different platforms, and often with different data standards, which are neither con-nected by a common access point, nor by web services, thus constituting a relevant obstacle to data access and usage. Taxonomic incongruences add a further complica...

An outline of the main distribution patterns of lichens in the ecoregions of Italy, accounting for their climatic, geographic, and environmental features, is still missing. On the basis of a GIS-based analysis, we summarized: (1) the main features (e.g., surface, climate, landscape, topographic heterogeneity, bedrock, eutrophication) of the 9 ecore...

In this contribution, new data concerning algae, bryophytes, fungi, and lichens of the Italian flora are presented. It includes new records and confirmations for the algae genus Chara , the bryophyte genera Homalia , Mannia , and Tortella , the fungal genera Cortinarius , Russula , and Stereum , and the lichen genera Cetrelia , Cladonia , Enterogra...

Despite that congruence across taxa has been proved as an effective tool to provide insights into the processes structuring the spatial distribution of taxonomic groups and is useful for conservation purposes, only a few studies on cross-taxon congruence focused on freshwater ecosystems and on the relations among vascular plants and lichens. We hyp...

Environmental sustainability of viticulture is negatively affected by prolonged droughts. In limestone dominated regions, there is limited knowledge on grapevine water status and on methods for accurate evaluation of actual water demand, necessary to appropriately manage irrigation. During a dry vintage, we monitored plant and soil water relations...

Ongoing climate change is apparently increasing tree mortality rates, and understanding mechanisms of drought-induced tree decline can improve mortality projections. Differential drought impact on conspecific individuals within a population has been reported, but no clear mechanistic explanation for this pattern has emerged. Following a severe drou...

An ecological biogeographical perspective provides an understanding of the factors that shape the geographical distribution of organisms, their biodiversity and ecological speciation. Focusing on members of the lichen genus Solenopsora, which are strongly linked to a Mediterranean-type climate, we aimed to depict their environmental niches in the A...

A citizen science initiative was launched in the province of Trieste, aimed at mapping the distribution of Ailanthus altissima, Ambrosia artemisiifolia and Senecio inaequidens. The reliability of citizen data was tested against control data obtained by trained personnel with a stratified random sampling. In spite of the lack of a strict sampling st...

I recenti sviluppi nel campo dell’informatizzazione e conservazione della biodiversità stanno portando allo sviluppo di nuovi sistemi informatici, che rendono possibile una efficiente raccolta, modifica, analisi e condivisione di dati e metadati. In quest’ottica è stato sviluppato un geodatabase che organizza dati di flora e vegetazione dell’area d...

The Mediterranean is one of the major biodiversity hotspot of the world. It has been identified as the "core" of the speciation process for many groups of organisms. It hosts an impressive number of species, many of which are classified as endangered taxa. Climate change in such a diverse context could heavily influence community composition, reduc...

L'accesso globale ai dati di biodiversità è una priorità per la ricerca e la politica sin dalla conferenza UNESCO di Rio. Negli ultimi 20 anni, i dati primari sono stati organizzati in grandi database federati, come GBIF e BioCASE (Guntsch et al. 2007). L'identificazione degli organismi è supportata da strumenti digitali di diverso tipo (Martellos...

This note adds new occurrence records of the hemipteran alien species Zelus renardii (Kolenati, 1856) in Italy by citizens, entomologists and photographers. This species was recorded for first time in Rome in 2013.

Ongoing variations in rainfall and temperature regimes affect the physiology and productivity of grapevines, calling for irrigation in drought-prone areas. During vintage 2015, we monitored plants water status and indirectly assessed rooting depth and exploited water sources (oxygen isotope analyses) in a mature Vitis vinifera cv. Malvasia Istriana...

STUDIO CONOSCITIVO DEI CAMBIAMENTI CLIMATICI E DI ALCUNI LORO IMPATTI IN FRIULI VENEZIA GIULIA PRIMO REPORT – marzo 2018 Supporto alla predisposizione di una strategia regionale di adattamento ai cambiamenti climatici e per le azioni di mitigazione

STUDIO CONOSCITIVO DEI CAMBIAMENTI CLIMATICI E DI ALCUNI LORO IMPATTI IN FRIULI VENEZIA GIULIA PRIMO REPORT – marzo 2018 Supporto alla predisposizione di una strategia regionale di adattamento ai cambiamenti climatici e per le azioni di mitigazione

This paper, based on data from the latest checklist of Italy, analyzes the distribution patterns of rare and common lichen species within biogeographically homogeneous versus heterogeneous areas of Italy, and the relationships with some main drivers of rarity and commonness. The following data were used: 1) commonness-rarity values of 2565 species...

In this contribution, new data concerning bryophytes, fungi, and lichens of the Italian flora are presented. It includes new records and confirmations for the bryophyte genera Diplophyllum and Ptychostomum, the fungal genera Arrhenia, Gymnosporangium, and Sporidesmium and the lichen genera Arthonia, Coenogonium, Flavoplaca, Gyalolechia, Parmotrema,...

In this contribution, new data concerning bryophytes, fungi, and lichens of the Italian flora are presented. It includes new records and confirmations for the bryophyte genera Diplophyllum and Ptychostomum , the fungal genera Arrhenia , Gymnosporangium , and Sporidesmium and the lichen genera Arthonia , Coenogonium , Flavoplaca , Gyalolechia , Parm...

In this contribution, new data concerning bryophytes, fungi, and lichens of the Italian flora are presented. It includes new records and confirmations for the bryophyte genera Diplophyllum and Ptychostomum , the fungal genera Arrhenia , Gymnosporangium , and Sporidesmium and the lichen genera Arthonia , Coenogonium , Flavoplaca , Gyalolechia , Parm...

Species distribution data are critical information sources when it comes to implementing the multiple Aichi Targets set by the international Convention on Biological Diversity. Although there have been international-scale efforts to aggregate distribution data, the magnitudes and locations of the gaps in biodiversity knowledge remain unclear. In th...

Recently, the Albanian Government started the process to join the European Union. This process also involves matching the EU parameters in protecting its biodiversity. In order to support the Albanian authorities, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, General Directorate for Development Cooperation (DGCS) and the International Union for Conserva...

This is the first attempt to provide an overview of the lichen diversity of the Alps, one of the biogegraphically most important and emblematic mountain systems worldwide. The checklist includes all lichenised species, plus a set of non- or doubtfully lichenised taxa frequently treated by lichenologists, excluding nonlichenised lichenicolous fungi....

This is the first attempt to provide an overview of the lichen diversity of the Alps, one of the biogegraphically most important and emblematic mountain systems worldwide. The checklist includes all lichenised species, plus a set of non- or doubtfully lichenised taxa frequently treated by lichenologists, excluding non-lichenised lichenicolous fungi...

In this contribution, new data concerning bryophytes, fungi, and lichens of the Italian flora are presented. It includes new records and confirmations for the bryophyte genera Diplophyllum and Ptychostomum, the fungal genera Arrhenia, Gymnosporangium, and Sporidesmium and the lichen genera Arthonia, Coenogonium, Flavoplaca, Gyalolechia, Parmotrema,...

CSMON-LIFE (Citizen Science MONitoring) aims at involving citizens in monitoring Italian biodiversity by a citizen science approach. Novel IT tools for mobile devices have been developed in the framework of the project, providing citizens with a platform for collecting and sharing geo-referenced data of target species. CSMON-LIFE also offered anoth...

Nowadays, urban areas play a crucial role in biodiversity conservation and habitat protection despite the constant pressures on which these habitats are subjected. They may even host relatively new plant communities due to the peculiar ecosystem where they vegetate. The port of Trieste (NE Italy) is characterized by a mixed mosaic of intensely huma...

Key message Easily measurable functional traits can be used as proxies in the selection of drought-tolerant saplings for reforestation in Mediterranean ecosystems. Abstract Heat and drought events—increasing both in frequency and severity—have led to forest decline, and are a serious threat for the Mediterranean biome. Whereas drought tolerance of...

Spatially-explicit dataset of plant species occurrences collected in the Province of Siena (Central Italy) is analysed, with the aim of investigating a) the relative role of environmental factors in shaping spatial patterns of plant species richness, and b) how the spatial scale at which predictors have been sampled determines the explicative power...

T and B lymphocyte subsets have been not univocally associated to Graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) and relapse of hematological malignancies after stem cell transplantation (SCT). Their sequential assessment together with B and T cell neogenesis indexes has been not thoroughly analysed in relation to these changing and interrelated immunologic/clin...

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ATG and values of T-lymphocyte subsets at different time points after SCT. SCT = stem cell transplantation; RTE = recent thymic emigrants; TEMRA = terminally differentiated effector memory; ^ Lymphocyte counts are expressed as cells/μl (median; range). (DOC)

Comparison of clinical and transplant characteristics between patients with and without acute GVHD. aGVHD = acute GVHD; SCT = stem cell transplantation; AL = acute leukaemia; MDS = myelodisplastic syndrome; CR = complete remission; upfront = never treated (all MDS); PR = partial remission; NR = no response; MUD = matched unrelated donor; MRD = matc...

Comparison of clinical and transplant characteristics between patients with and without chronic GVHD. cGVHD = chronic GVHD; SCT = stem cell transplantation; AL = acute leukaemia; MDS = myelodisplastic syndrome; CR = complete remission; upfront = never treated (all MDS); PR = partial remission; NR = no response; MUD = matched unrelated donor; MRD =...

Comparison of clinical and transplant characteristics between relapsed and non relapsed patients. SCT = stem cell transplantation; AML = acute myeloid leukaemia; ALL = acute lymphoblastic leukaemia; MDS = myelodisplastic syndrome; CR = complete remission; upfront = never treated (all MDS); PR = partial remission; NR = no response; MUD = matched unr...

Participation of citizens to research activities probably began with a “Christmas bird count” in 1900. Citizen science activities can aim at several purposes: long term monitoring, environmental education, preservation of traditional ecological knowledge, etc. Citizen scientists can collect data, support scientists in the field, involve decision ma...

This paper presents the role of the Italian National Biodiversity Network in making available biodiversity data from Italian Botanic Gardens at a national and international level. The case study of the Botanic Garden of Rome is presented explaining procedures and methods for collecting georeferenced data on living plant species and making them avai...

A complete guide to the rich flora of the metropolitan area of Rome (more than 1600 infrageneric taxa) was made available both as an online multi-entry query interface and as a stand-alone dichotomous key for mobile devices. From the general key, it will be possible to derive many smaller (and hence easier) guides to different parks and gardens of...

Identification of organisms is traditionally based on the use of "classic" identification keys, normally printed on paper. These keys have several drawbacks: they are mainly based on the systematics, requiring identification of orders, families and genera at first; they are written by experts for other experts, in a specific scientific jargon; they...

The Open Discovery Space (ODS) project was conceived to introduce innovative resource-based teaching and learning practices in European schools, to promote the creation of communities between European school members and to boost the demand for open educational resources among teachers. After 3 years of applying the ODS innovation model, more than 2...

Invasion by alien plant species may be rapid and aggressive, causing erosion of local biodiversity. This is particularly true for islands, where natural and anthropogenic corridors promote the rapid spread of invasive plants. Despite evidence shows that corridors may facilitate plant invasions, how their importance in the spread of alien species va...

Checklists, the result of time-consuming exploration and painstaking bibliographic research, can be easily converted into online databases, which have the advantage of being updatable online in real time, and of reaching a much wider audience. However, thousands of local checklists (Natural Parks, protected areas, etc.) are still available on paper...

Riassunto Questo lavoro presenta un esempio di una chiave dicotomica per l'identificazione dei 581 taxa infragenerici di piante vascolari sinora riportati per il basso corso del Fiume Lamone (Prov. di ravenna). La chiave, disponibile anche in forma interattiva consultabile in rete e su strumenti mobile, è stata largamente generata da un computer a...

Primary biodiversity data are often organised in federated databases in the framework of big international projects and initiatives. Other data are normally organised into isolated resources: ecological, morphological and morpho-anatomic databases, checklists, archives of digital identification tools, etc. These data, which do not refer specificall...

The checklist of hornworts, liverworts and mosses of Italy is available online as a federated database, which can be queried by combining taxonomic and distributional information. Several digital identification keys have been included in the system, which will be part of the forthcoming Italian Biodiversity Network.

Since its formal institution in May 2012, the Italian Biodiversity Network is aggregating data from several research centres, for a total of ca. 1.5 million records. Botanical data made ca. 50% of the total, and range from primary biodiversity data to ecological, morpho-anatomical and taxonomical information. However, this is only a small portion o...

I Colli Euganei ospitano una flora notoriamente ricca e interessante, che ha attirato l’attenzione deibotanici sin dagli albori di questa disciplina. Questa è una guida all’identificazione delle specielegnose (alberi, arbusti e liane) presenti nel comprensorio dei Colli Euganei allo stato spontaneo, siaquelle autoctone sia quelle a carattere avvent...

This article describes the experience of project Dryades, coordinated by the University of Trieste, in developing interactive identification keys in the form of applications for mobile devices (iPhone/iPad/iPodtouch). All of our keys were previously generated from a database of morpho-anatomical characters using software FRIDA. The applications for...

Checklists are fundamental for accessing information about organisms known to occur in a given area. It is possible to convert textual, paper-printed checklists into structured digital formats. This process can eventually lead to the development of digital information systems, for which the output can be far more complex than a list of taxa. Digita...

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the cont...

Identification keys are decision trees which require the observation of one or more morphological characters of an organism at each step of the process. While modern digital keys can overcome several constraints of classical paper-printed keys, their performance is not error-free. Moreover, identification cannot be always achieved when a specimen l...

List of the analysed plants collected from Mt. Valerio flora. For each sample the voucher number (V.N.), the species name (Nomenclature follows [45], [46]) and the Accession Numbers corresponding to DNA sequences of the three analysed markers are also included; “-”: sequencing failure. To evaluate the contribution of intraspecific variability, thre...

Evaluation of intraspecific genetic variability. For a subset of 50 plant species from the Mt. Valerio the mean values of intraspecific variability and the standard error for the three tested makers are provided. Sampling details can be retrieved from Table S1. (DOCX)

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the cont...

Aim of the Important Plant Area (IPA) program - integral part of the CBD Global Strategy for Plant Conservation - is the constitution of a network of the most important natural or semi-natural sites for wild plant and fungi conservation. Giving lower plants and fungi the same importance as vascular plants, the program provides to individual countri...

Various implementation approaches are available for digital field guides and identification tools that are created for the web and mobile devices. The architecture of the "biowikifarm" publishing platform and some technical and social advantages of a document-and author-centric approach based on the MediaWiki open source software over custom-develo...

FRIDA (FRiendly IDentificAtion) is a new software application for producing multi-authored interactive identification keys, which can be published on the Web, stored on optical devices, and used on mobile devices as PDAs and Smartphones, both on-line or in stand-alone mode. FRIDA is based on a double-level architecture, which grants to the authors...

FRIDA (FRiendly IDentificAtion) is a new software application for producing multi–authored interactive identification keys, which can be published on the Web, stored on optical devices, and used on mobile devices as PDAs and Smartphones, both on–line or in stand–alone mode. FRIDA is based on a double–level architecture, which grants to the authors...

FRIDA (FRiendly IDentificAtion) is a software for generating different types of digital identification keys starting from a database of characters. Its first release dates back to 2003. Since the first version, FRIDA was constantly developed to improve its core functions, and to add new features. At the beginning of 2010 it was decided to develop a...

In biology, proper identification is fundamental to retrieve information linked to the name of an organism. Digital identification keys can be easier than the traditional paper-printed keys. However, like the latter, they often cannot be modified by users. A research group of the European Project KeyToNature has developed a new open source software...

Design principles, features, and data exchange options of an open source implementation of single access keys for the collaborative MediaWiki platform are presented.

Stand-alone Pocket PC HTML-version: Interactive e-key for 371 species of trees and shrubs in Bulgaria Tested on Microsoft Windows OS and on Android 4.+. Download, decompress in a new folder and start by opening the "home.html" file. The FULL images-dataset e-key available also ONLINE at: http://dbiodbs.units.it/carso/chiavi_pub21?sc=324 (Last insp...

This paper focuses on computer-aided tools for identifying organisms and on relevant implications for rethinking environmental education in protected areas. The new tools have several advantages over traditional paper-printed keys: 1) being disentangled from systematics, they can be made much easier and also be used by non-experts, 2) they give acc...