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Povzetek: The skin serves as the outermost barrier between an organism and its environment and fulfills numerous physiological and ecological functions. In lizards, scale morphology is an important adaptive trait that mediates responses to environmental influences such as extreme temperatures, ultraviolet radiation, drought and anthropogenic disturbances. Our study provides an analysis of the environmental drivers influencing intraspecific variation in the scale ecomorphology of the island lizard Gallotia galloti across 3700 m of elevation, taking into account different macro- and microclimatic conditions and varying degrees of anthropogenic influences and across three body regions: dorsal, ventral and tail. We found several correlations suggesting multiple dependencies of scale morphology on environmental variation. The positive correlation between July temperature and wind speed at 3 cm above the ground and dorsal scale density showed that more densely packed scales are associated with hotter and drier environments. This could possibly be related to the thermoregulatory and hydroregulatory function of the skin, since the dorsal side of the body is most exposed. Higher sun exposure was associated with larger dorsal and tail scales, indicating a possible photoprotective function. Ventral scales are not exposed to the pressure of solar radiation and wind. Accordingly, ventral scales showed no correlation with these factors, but we found that a higher ratio of day-to-night temperature variation relative to seasonal changes (isothermality) was associated with a higher density of ventral scales. The human footprint index positively correlated with larger and denser ventral (and not dorsal or tail) scales. Overall, our results illustrate the complexity of responses of scale morphology to different environmental variations. Evidently, G. galloti exhibits morphological diversity in response to climatic conditions and urbanization, highlighting the potential ecological significance of scale size variation. Future research should investigate the genetic basis and possible effects of climate change on scale morphology.
Ključne besede: scale morphology, climatic conditions, human footprint, adaptation, skin, elevational gradient, zoology
Objavljeno v DiRROS: 17.10.2025; Ogledov: 565; Prenosov: 535
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Povzetek: We report a sequence of unusual male behaviors observed in Nephila pilipes (Fabricius, 1793) (Araneae: Nephilidae Simon, 1894), a sexually size dimorphic tropical spider species in Singapore. We documented a male suitor using his mouth parts (chelicerae) rather than his copulatory organs (pedipalps) to repeatedly probe female genitals. The behaviors may have served as a strategy to assess the female’s mating status, functioned as a courtship strategy, or, most plausibly, represented an attempt to remove a genital plug. The documented chrono-sequence culminated in the male’s attempted commensalism, followed by an aggressive attack by the female, resulting in near-fatal injury to the male. Notably, the attack did not escalate into cannibalism, suggesting that the extreme size difference in Nephila may render small males unappealing as prey.
Ključne besede: sexual size dimorphism, eSSD mating syndrome, genital plugging, sexual cannibalism, zoology, ethology
Objavljeno v DiRROS: 18.04.2025; Ogledov: 1596; Prenosov: 647
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Povzetek: The occurrence of the variegated molehopper Xya variegata in Slovenia is confirmed unambiguously for the first time, based on observations of adults and larvae on 24. 3. 2023 and 2. 6. 2023 on the banks of a gravel pit along the Mura River, east of Petišovci in the Prekmurje region, northeastern Slovenia. Thus, the previously doubtful inclusion of the species in the checklist of Slovenian Orthoptera is now justified. Further research is needed to improve knowledge of its distribution and biology. A detailed assessment of the threat status and planning of conservation measures for this threatened and ecologically highly specialised grasshopper species should also be carried out.
Ključne besede: grasshoppers, Caelifera, Xya, distribution, threat status, Slovenia, zoology
Objavljeno v DiRROS: 04.03.2025; Ogledov: 1105; Prenosov: 778
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Povzetek: The lime leaf-miner, Phyllonorycter issikii is an invasive micromoth with an unusually higher number of haplotypes in the invaded area (Europe, Western Siberia) compared to its putative native region (East Asia). The origin of the genetic diversity in the neocolonized region remains unclear. We surveyed over 15 thousand herbarium specimens of lime trees (Tilia spp.) collected across the Palearctic over a period of 252 years (1764–2016) looking for preserved larvae within the archival leaf mines. We found 203 herbarium specimens with leaf mines of Ph. issikii collected in East Asia, one of them dating back to 1830, i.e. 133 years before the description of the species. In contrast, only 22 herbarium specimens collected in the West Palearctic in the last three decades (1987–2015) carried leaf mines. DNA barcoding of archival specimens revealed 32 haplotypes out of which 23 were novel (not known from modern populations) and found exclusively in East Asia. Six haplotypes are shared between both native and invaded areas and only two were responsible for the recent invasion of the Western Palearctic. The remarkable number of newly discovered haplotypes in archival populations supports East Asia as the native region and the source area of invasion.
Ključne besede: ecology, entomology, genetics, next-generation sequencing, zoology, invasive species
Objavljeno v DiRROS: 26.02.2025; Ogledov: 907; Prenosov: 524
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Povzetek: The ecological significance of vibroscape has been largely overlooked, excluding an important part of the available information from ecosystem assessment. Insects rely primarily on substrate-borne vibrational signalling in their communication, which is why the majority of terrestrial insects are excluded from passive acoustic monitoring. The ability to monitor the biological component of the natural vibroscape has been limited due to a lack of data and methods to analyse the data. In this paper, we evaluate the use of deep learning models to automatically detect and classify vibrational signals from field recordings obtained with laser vibrometry. We created a dataset of annotated vibroscape recordings of meadow habitats, containing vibrational signals categorized as pulses, harmonic signals, pulse trains, and complex signals. We compared different deep neural network architectures for the detection and classification of vibrational signals, including convolutional and transformer models. The PaSST transformer architecture, which was fine-tuned from a pre-trained checkpoint demonstrated the highest performance on all tasks, achieving an average precision of 0.79 in signal detection. For signals with more than one hour of annotated data, the classification models achieved instance-based F1-scores above 0.8, enabling automatic analysis of activity patterns. In our case study, where 24-hour field recordings were analysed, the trained models (even those with lower precision) revealed interesting activity patterns of different species. The presented study, together with the dataset we publish with this paper, lays the foundation for further analysis of the vibroscape and the development of automated methods for ecotremological monitoring that complement passive acoustic monitoring and provide a comprehensive approach to ecosystem assessment.
Ključne besede: vibroscape, ecotremology, deep learning, automatic classification, biotremology, insects, zoology, laser vibrometry, ecosystem assessment
Objavljeno v DiRROS: 21.01.2025; Ogledov: 958; Prenosov: 566
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