Dipartimento di Scienze, Università Roma Tre, Viale G. Marconi 446, 00146 Rome, Italy.
Dipartimento di Scienze, Università Roma Tre, Viale G. Marconi 446, 00146 Rome, Italy.
Sci Total Environ. 2022 Jul 15;830:154822. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.154822. Epub 2022 Mar 24.
Among intensive agricultural practices, pesticides, mowing, and heavy agricultural machineries have become an important tool to maximize harvesting and secure animal husbandry. However, they are also cause of agricultural ecosystem decline, often leading to degradation of key micro-habitat features for many species, higher predation risk and lower food availability. We investigated the diet and foraging ecology of the Italian wall lizard in agricultural areas to determine whether different management practices (conventional, organic, and control) can affect (i) the structure of the trophic niche of the species; (ii) prey diversity, the degree of individual specialization, and the overall population feeding strategy; (iii) lizards' health status. Faecal pellets were collected for diet composition analyses, while prey diversity in the environment was estimated by placing adhesive traps. Lizards' body condition did not differ among management type although males from control field resulted slightly larger than those from conventional and organic areas. The species showed a generalist (conventional and organic areas) and mixed (control area) feeding strategy with a preference for coleopterans. Although a different prey diversity was found in control areas compared to organic and conventional ones, diet composition and the importance of specific food items was similar among management types. This may suggest that management activities may have affected the overall prey availability and indirectly influenced lizard trophic behaviour. Our study provides a comprehensive knowledge on the feeding ecology of P. siculus in managed habitats, which may have useful implications for the overall conservation of lizards in agricultural environments.
在集约化农业实践中，农药、修剪和重型农业机械已成为最大限度提高收获量和确保畜牧业安全的重要工具。然而，它们也是农业生态系统退化的原因，常常导致许多物种关键微生境特征的退化、更高的捕食风险和更低的食物可利用性。我们调查了农业区意大利壁蜥的饮食和觅食生态学，以确定不同的管理实践（常规、有机和对照）是否会影响：(i) 物种的营养生态位结构；(ii) 猎物多样性、个体专业化程度和总体种群觅食策略；(iii) 蜥蜴的健康状况。我们收集粪便颗粒进行饮食成分分析，同时通过放置粘性陷阱来估计环境中的猎物多样性。尽管对照区的雄性蜥蜴比常规区和有机区的雄性蜥蜴略大，但它们的身体状况在管理类型之间没有差异。该物种表现出一种广食性（常规和有机区）和混合（对照区）的觅食策略，对鞘翅目昆虫有偏好。尽管对照区的猎物多样性与有机区和常规区不同，但饮食成分和特定食物的重要性在管理类型之间相似。这可能表明管理活动可能影响了总体猎物的可利用性，并间接影响了蜥蜴的营养行为。我们的研究提供了有关管理生境中 P. siculus 觅食生态学的综合知识，这对于农业环境中蜥蜴的整体保护可能具有重要意义。
