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Bats are major consumers of arthropods, and there is ever growing evidence that they play a pivotal role in the fight against agricultural pests. However, relatively little research has addressed explicitly this important topic, and studies in temperate regions (especially European case studies) are infrequent. In the last few years, state-of-art molecular methods to identify prey remains in droppings and new experimental approaches to assess the actual magnitude of this ecosystem service have opened new perspectives in research. In this review, we discuss such aspects with an emphasis on temperate regions, and identify new research frontiers. These comprise: (1) detecting new bat species that consume pests, and further pest insects that bats might eat; (2) exploring sublethal effects of bat echolocation calls on tympanate moth pests; (3) getting a better understanding of bat predation over blood-sucking arthropods that parasitize livestock; (4) unveiling indirect effects of bat predation on plant pathogens; (5) implementing models to map the occurrence of bat insectivory and the potential to promote it; and (6) analyse bat droppings for active surveillance of arthropod pests and the diseases they carry. We also highlight that so-called “common” bat species, often neglected in conservation actions, are likely to provide the bulk of pest suppression in agroecosystems. All such aspects merit investigation and may lead to novel management practices aimed at conjugating bat conservation with economic and social sustainability of farming.

Artificial light at night (ALAN) is a pervasive form of pollution largely affecting wildlife, from individual behaviour to community structure and dynamics. As nocturnal mammals, bats are often adversely affected by ALAN, yet some "light-opportunistic" species exploit it by hunting insects swarming near lights. Here we used two potentially competing pipistrelle species as models, Kuhl's (Pipistrellus kuhlii) and common (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) pipistrelles, both known to forage in artificially illuminated areas. We set our study in a mountainous area of central Italy, where only recently did the two species become syntopic. We applied spatial modelling and radiotracking to contrast potential vs. actual environmental preferences by the two pipistrelles. Species distribution models and niche analysis showed a large interspecific niche overlap, including a preference for illuminated areas, presenting a potential competition scenario. Pipistrellus pipistrellus association with ALAN, however, was weakened by adding P.kuhlii as a biotic variable to the model. Radiotracking showed that the two species segregated habitats at a small spatial scale and that P.kuhlii used artificially illuminated sites much more frequently than P.pipistrellus, despite both species potentially being streetlamp foragers. We demonstrate that ALAN influences niche segregation between two potentially competing species, confirming its pervasive effects on species and community dynamics, and provide an example of how light pollution and species' habitat preferences may weave a tapestry of complex ecological interactions.

We assessed whether the presence and abundance of plant pathogens and antagonists change in soil fungal communities along a land abandonment gradient. The study was carried out in the Cilento area (Southern Italy) at a site with three different habitats found along a land abandonment gradient: agricultural land, Mediterranean shrubland and woodland. For all microbiological substrates the colony forming units were about 3.1 × 106 g−1 soil for agricultural land and about 1.1 × 106 g−1 soil for Mediterranean shrubland and woodland. We found the following genera in all habitats: Cladosporium, Mortierella, Penicillium and Trichoderma. In agricultural land, the significantly most abundant fungus genera were Aspergillus, Fusarium, Cylindrocarpon and Nectria; in Mediterranean shrubland, Rhizopus and Trichoderma; and in woodland, Bionectria, Mortierella, Cladosporium, Diplodia, Paecilomyces, Penicillium and Trichoderma. We found a total of 8, 8 and 9 species of fungal antagonist, and 16, 6 and 6 species of fungal plant pathogens in agricultural land, Mediterranean shrubland and woodland respectively. Fungal plant pathogens decreased significantly over a land abandonment gradient, while we no found significant differences among fungal antagonists in the three habitats. We conclude that a decrease in the number of fungal pathogen species occurs when formerly cultivated areas are abandoned. On the other hand, fungal antagonists seem not to be affected by this process.

Soil bioengineering techniques to repair slope failures and increase slope stability are often used, if possible, as alternatives to traditional structures in order to mitigate the environmental impact without losing the effectiveness of the work. These techniques use live plants and entrust most of their structural resistance to wood members whose mechanical characteristics, however, decrease with time. Very few investigations have dealt with the decay of mechanical characteristics of wood elements employed in soil bioengineering techniques and lifetime predictions. This information is also important for durability forecasting. In this paper we present the results of experimental analyses carried out to evaluate the degradation of mechanical properties of untreated timber elements, which were collected from single and double live cribwalls or check-dams built about 10 years ago in the Vesuvius National Park (Naples, Southern Italy). To help in adequately interpreting the behavior of a complex material such as wood, a novelty of this study is not only the coupling of the ultrasonic and sclerometric nondestructive testing (NDT) methods so as to reduce measurement errors, but also to frame the outcomes from mechanical tests within the biological analysis of fungi detected on the timbers. Exploratory statistical analyses have revealed that there exist nearly no correlations between moisture contents in the timber elements and both transversal and longitudinal ultrasonic velocities, but some clustering provides insights in the results obtained. Comparisons between results using data measured on “old” and “new” timber elements enable some evaluations of residual safety factor assessment to be carried out.