Monitoraggio delle specie di interesse comunitario nella Zona Speciale di Conservazione (ZSC) IT 9220135 “Gravine di Matera”, due casi di stima della popolazione

Monitoring species of Community interest included in Annexes II, IV and V of the Habitats Directive is an obligation for all member states of the European Union, due to the provisions of art. 11 of Directive 92/43 "Habitats". In fact, the article 11 says: “Member States shall undertake surveillance of the conservation status of the natural habitats and species referred to in Article 2 with particular regard to priority natural habitat types and priority species”. The surveillance of species is aimed to set the conservation status at site and member State level, as well as allowing to estimate the conservation status at EU level. The estimation of the species population is aimed to defining their state of conservation in the studied site as required by the Standard Data Form (SDF) which is to be filled in, for each site of the European Natura 2000 Network. In this study we want to present two cases of population estimation of two species included in the annexes of the Directive: Cerambyx cerdo L. (Coleoptera, Cerambycidae) and the amphibian Bombina pachypus (Bonaparte) (Anura, Bombinatoridae), also to promote the research and scientific activities necessary to achieve the obligation set out in Article 11 of the Habitat Directive (Art. 18). All data comes from two projects implemented by the authors on behalf of the Murgia Materana Regional Park in Matera (Basilicata, Italy). Bombina pachypus has been monitored within the “LIFE ARUPA” project, while Cerambyx cerdo has been monitored within the project "Centre for studies and conservation of biodiversity" funded by PO-FESR Basilicata 2014-2020. The second year of monitoring of Cerambyx cerdo (2021), we innovated the monitoring process, designing and developing a dedicated software system for monitoring the species. All the field data necessary for the population estimate and for the tracking and documentation of the survey activities about Cerambyx cerdo population, were collected through application software for android smartphones, called "Great cAPPricorn" used for the first time in the present study. The software allows to mark georeferenced data, accompanied by all textual and multimedia information needed, such as data about traps, surveys, photos or used baits. The software is also capable of processing population estimates using the Schnabel method. The android software guides the user to apply the methodology of the "Manual for monitoring species and habitats of Community interest (Directive 92/43/EEC) in Italy: animal species, published by ISPRA, Manuals and Guidelines Series 141/2016 (Stoch & Genovesi, 2016). The survey of data directly from the field, considerably facilitate the post-survey activities such as archiving and processing the data collected. In the specific case, the monitoring system archives all the data entered in dedicated databases and processes all the data entered during the surveys, calculating the population estimate of the species. The software also edits a detailed report of all the survey activities, in addition to the data processing performed.