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With their unique ecosystems and evolutionary dynamics, small islands offer fascinating contexts to explore animal diversity. Island bats are key players in maintaining ecological balance. However, their populations are threatened worldwide, necessitating comprehensive research and conservation strategies. Pantelleria, a small Mediterranean island and a biogeographic crossroad between Europe and Africa, offers an excellent model to exemplify the challenges to bat conservation in such geographic contexts. We tested three hypotheses: (1) bats would show weak preference patterns for landscape composition due to the island's heterogeneous landscapes, (2) farmland (especially vineyards) would strongly affect bat activity, and (3) distance from water sources would highly influence bat richness and activity. We surveyed bats acoustically using Audiomoth recorders covering most of the island's surface. We recorded seven bat species, including endangered Plecotus gaisleri, Myotis punicus and Rhinolophus mehelyi. Bats showed weak preferences for specific landscape composition, but the dominant species (Pipistrellus kuhlii) decreased its activity for increasing portions of vineyards within the landscape. Moreover, distance to water critically influenced bat richness and activity. Agricultural expansion, pesticide use and human activities pose significant threats to bats on Pantelleria. We advocate for sustainable farming practices and careful water resource management to safeguard bat habitats and mitigate these threats. Conservation should target vineyards, a key economic resource to produce world‐renowned wine 'Passito di Pantelleria' by reducing pesticide use and adopting organic management. Water might be supplemented in critical dry habitats. We urge the preservation of bat diversity to support ecosystem health and resilience on small islands like Pantelleria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enterocytozoon bieneusi is a microsporidia commonly found in the gastrointestinal tract of humans and a wide range of other animals, constituting a major cause of microsporidiosis in humans. Although E. bieneusi has been detected in humans, domestic, and wild animals in Portugal, and its presence in bats has been linked to zoonotic characteristics, its occurrence in bats within the country has not been reported. In this study, we investigated the presence of E. bieneusi in 380 bat fecal samples collected in mainland Portugal through a nested PCR assay targeting the internal transcribed spacer region and the flanking small and large subunits of the ribosomal RNA. Enterocytozoon bieneusi was detected in one bat sample (i.e. 0.26%; Pipistrellus pipistrellus). Additionally, another sample tested positive for Enterocytozoon sp. Phylogenetic analysis of the obtained ITS sequence of E. bieneusi revealed clustering within the potentially zoonotic Group 1. This study represents the first report of E. bieneusi in a bat from Europe. Findings presented here contribute to an enhanced understanding of E. bieneusi epidemiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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There is a consensus that employers, when recruiting, look for future employees to have a certain required profile. This profile consists of a set of skills that are considered crucial for the correct performance of the tasks that the employees will be performing. It is usually easy to identify which hard skills employers require, but it is not so easy to find out which soft skills employees should have. In addition to this difficulty, there is the possibility that higher education institutions may not be preparing students to align with employers' envisioned skill sets. As part of the European Project "Think4Jobs" (2020-1-EL01-KA203-078797), an exploratory study was conducted to understand whether higher education institutions develop, and employers demand, individuals with the same profiles and to characterise these profiles. For this purpose, eight directors of different higher education programmes and six employers were interviewed. The information from the interviews was processed using the content analysis technique with the support of the NVivo data analysis software. The findings indicate that both educators and employers acknowledge the significance of soft skills, assigning them higher importance than hard skills, and the necessity of coordination between the two skill sets. Respondents also emphasised the importance of training, with course directors focusing more on initial training, while employers highlighted in-job training. Motivation, creativity, interpersonal relationships, communication, initiative and critical thinking were the skills identified by both groups as essential to an employee's profile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of novel coronaviruses (CoVs) has emphasized the need to understand their diversity and distribution in animal populations. Bats have been identified as crucial reservoirs for CoVs, and they are found in various bat species worldwide. In this study, we investigated the presence of CoVs of four cavernicolous bats in six locations in the centre and south of Portugal. We collected faeces, anal, and buccal swab samples, as well as air samples from the locations using a Coriolis air sampler. Our results indicate that CoVs were more readily detected in faecal samples compared to anal and buccal swab samples. No CoVs were detected in the air samples. Phylogenetic analysis showed that the detected viruses belong to the Alphacoronavirus genus. This study represents the first report of Alphacoronaviruses circulating in bats in Portugal and highlights the importance of continuous surveillance for novel CoVs in bat populations globally. Ongoing surveillance for CoVs in bat populations is essential as they are a vital source of these viruses. It is crucial to understand the ecological relationships between animals, humans, and the environment to prevent and control the emergence and transmission of infectious diseases. Further ecological studies are needed to investigate the factors contributing to the emergence and transmission of zoonotic viruses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In farmland landscapes worldwide, there are pervasive trends for either intensification or abandonment. Intensification is a widely recognised driver of wild bee declines, but little is known about the consequences of land abandonment, though it involves major habitat shifts from fallows, pastures and meadows, to shrublands and forests.Focusing on a Mediterranean landscape, we investigated long‐term changes in wild bee communities during secondary vegetation succession after land abandonment. We used a space‐for‐time substitution approach, sampling plants and wild bees on five successional stages, from grasslands, through shrublands, to oak woodlands.We recorded 2721 bees, representing over 150 species. Grasslands had the highest wild bee abundance and high diversity of oligolectic species. Moving through successional stages, there was a rapid decline in bee abundance combined with a progressive accumulation of rare species, resulting in maximum diversity of the overall community, ground nesters, polyleges, and oligoleges in oak woodlands. Bee diversity was positively related to plant taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity. There was high turnover in community composition along the succession, with species occurring in grasslands being largely absent from later successional stages, and vice versa. From 21 indicator species, 17 were associated with grasslands, including the only threatened species.Our results suggest that a mosaic of habitats at different successional stages, particularly grasslands and oak woodlands, are necessary to maximise the diversity and abundance of wild bees at the landscape scale. Sustained management is thus needed under land abandonment to retain early‐successional herbaceous habitats and to ensure woodland regeneration and protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sudden loss of habitats due to natural or anthropogenic disturbances causes displacement of mobile animals from affected areas to refuge habitats, where large but often transitory concentrations of individuals may occur. While these local density increases have been previously described, the hypothesis that crowding disrupts demographic processes remains largely untested.Here we used the sudden flooding of a river valley by a hydroelectric reservoir as a quasi‐experiment to investigate the consequences of crowding on demography, fecundity and social structure in the European free‐tailed bat Tadarida teniotis.We monitored bat populations at roosts near and far from the flooded area, before (2013–2014), during (2015) and after (2016) habitat flooding. We assessed population demographic parameters using Capture–Mark–Recapture (CMR) models (3,821 PIT‐tagged individuals), and used genetic relatedness among individuals (1,407 individuals genotyped for 14 microsatellite markers) to infer changes in social structure.Habitat loss through flooding was associated with significant but transitory increases in the number of bats using nearby roosts. This may be related to the higher probability of individuals arriving at those roosts during flooding, together with increases in individual local residency through time, particularly among males. Individual apparent survival was highest during flooding and lowest in the following year, while the probability of leaving a roost safe from flooding was higher near the impact area than farther away. Crowding did not negatively affect fecundity, but the arrival of new individuals led to changes in social structure as revealed by lower genetic relatedness between individuals after disturbance at roosts near the flooding area, but not in those farther afield.Our study documents a clear example of crowding effects, suggesting that bats losing roosts due to a hydroelectric reservoir moved to alternative roosts, where local increases in population size and the arrival of new individuals reduced genetic relatedness and apparent survival, but not fecundity. These results support the hypothesis that crowding after habitat loss can disrupt population processes, even though effects may be subtle and short‐lived. Also, they point out the need to duly consider crowding effects when assessing and mitigating anthropogenic impacts on animal populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]