Le faune a mammiferi della Sicilia tra il Tardiglaciale e l'Olocene

Abstract

Biogeographia vol. XXX — 2011 (Pubblicato il 23 dicembre 2011) La Biogeografia della Sicilia Le faune a mammiferi della Sicilia tra il Tardoglaciale e l’Olocene DARIA PETRUSO*, MAURIZIO SARA**, GIOVANNI SURDI*, FEDERICO MASINI* ”‘ Dipartimento di Scienze a’eZ[a Yerra e del Mare, Uniz/ersita degli Stadi, via Arc/Jirafi 22, 90123 Palermo (Italy); e—mail: a’aria.petruso @um;z2a. it; federico. masinz'@unzpa. it giozzamzi. 5ara’z'@anz;1ga. it ** Dipartimento di Biologia Ambientale e Biodiz/ersita‘, Universita degli Studi, via Arc/Jirafi 18, 90123 Palermo (Italy); e—maz'[: maarz'zio.sara@anz]2a.it Keywords: Sicily, insularity, faunal turnover, mammals, Late Glacial-Holocene. SUMMARY A check—list of Sicilian terrestrial mammals from Late Glacial to the Holocene has been compiled and a quan- titative methodology of data analysis to calculate their occurrence and extinction rates has been adopted, in order to synthesize the turnover of mammal species occurred during the last 17.5 In such interval Sicily, probably passed from a full connection (through a temporary land bridge generated by eustatic lowering change of sea lev- el) with Southern Calabria to the present isolation phase. To better focus the faunal turnover, this temporal inter- val has been subdivided into three phases: Late Glacial, ancient and recent Holocene. 28 Mammal taxa were record- ed: 17 in the Late Glacial, 18 in the ancient Holocene and 26 in the recent Holocene. The high turnover index (48%) of Late Glacial was caused by either high levels of extinction (38%) of the pre—existing mammal fauna and immigration of new species into the island (58%). Transition to ancient Holocene recorded a much more moder- ate turnover (20%) with low extinctions (17%) and immigrations (23%), the same as the turnover index from an- cient to recent Holocene (25%). But in this last case a much higher immigration rate (42%) and a very low ex- tinction rate (9%) was noticed, probably due to human introductions. PREMESSA Le Variazioni climatiche del Quaternario sono largamente riconosciute co- me il principale processo storico che ha influenzato la struttura dei popolamenti faunistici dell’intero emisfeto settentrionale (Frenzel, 1973; Hewitt, 1999, 2000). Grazie alle severe oscillazioni climatiche il biota temperato E: state sot- toposto a diversi episodi di contrazione ed espansione areale (Hewitt, 1996) che hanno lasciato una profonda strutturazione nel genoma dei taxa interessa— ti (Taberlet et al., 1998) ed altrettante profonde tracce nelle distribuzioni geo—