Mammalia

Battisti, Corrado, Cento, Michele, Fraticelli, Fulvio, Hueting, Steven & Muratore, Sergio, 2021, Vertebrates in the “ Palude di Torre Flavia ” Special Protection Area (Lazio, central Italy): an updated checklist, Natural History Sciences 8 (1), pp. 3-28 : 21

Mammalia

We found records for 20 species of mammals: 18 native – one Erinaceomorpha, three Soricomorpha, five Rodentia (including three Muridae as palaeo-allochtonous species), five Chiroptera, three Carnivora and one Artiodactyla) and two non native rodents: Sciurus carolinensis (Gmelin, 1788), one individual escaped from captivity, and Myocastor coypus (Molina, 1782), as naturalized species ( Tab. 5). The presence of Canis lupus Linnaeus, 1758 has been confirmed in the adjacent areas (2 adults and 5 juv. near Fosso Turbino - Furbara and Macchiatonda reserve, about 3 km to the north; S. Donfrancesco, S. Muratore, pers. comm.; July 2020). Even though in March 2020, 10 sheep were predated in the Palude di Torre Flavia by a canid, it was impossible to clearly assign the predation to a wolf: likely, the event is ascribable to a domestic dog or a wolf-dog hybrid (S. Donfrancesco, S. Esigibili, pers. comm.). For the above given reason, this species has not been included in the checklist.

The bat Miniopterus schreibersii (Kuhl, 1817) is the only species assigned to a conservation concern category (Vulnerable). Further research is necessary to improve the knowledge on the presence of some less obvious and, therefore, neglected taxa (e.g., Carnivora Mustelidae, Chiroptera).