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Climate change and biological invasions are rapidly reshuffling species distribution, restructuring the biological communities of many ecosystems worldwide. Tracking these transformations in the marine environment is crucial, but our understanding of climate change effects and invasive species dynamics is often hampered by the practical challenge of surveying large geographical areas. Here, we focus on the Mediterranean Sea, a hot spot for climate change and biological invasions to investigate recent spatiotemporal changes in fish abundances and distribution. To this end, we accessed the local ecological knowledge (LEK) of small‐scale and recreational fishers, reconstructing the dynamics of fish perceived as “new” or increasing in different fishing areas. Over 500 fishers across 95 locations and nine different countries were interviewed, and semiquantitative information on yearly changes in species abundance was collected. Overall, 75 species were mentioned by the respondents, mostly warm‐adapted species of both native and exotic origin. Respondents belonging to the same biogeographic sectors described coherent spatial and temporal patterns, and gradients along latitudinal and longitudinal axes were revealed. This information provides a more complete understanding of the shifting distribution of Mediterranean fishes and it also demonstrates that adequately structured LEK methodology might be applied successfully beyond the local scale, across national borders and jurisdictions. Acknowledging this potential through macroregional coordination could pave the way for future large‐scale aggregations of individual observations, increasing our potential for integrated monitoring and conservation planning at the regional or even global level. This might help local communities to better understand, manage, and adapt to the ongoing biotic transformations driven by climate change and biological invaders.

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Understanding human-wildlife conflicts and monitoring their consequences, such as wildlife persecution, is crucial for biological conservation. Although most theoretical models suggest that the influence of value orientations on behavior is mediated by higher order constructs such as attitudes and norms, wildlife value orientations are widely used to assess human-wildlife relationships and to predict human behavior towards wildlife. We have no evidence of studies which have measured them in Mediterranean countries, where the highest biodiversity level in temperate Document type: Accepted version of the final paper, in line with the journal guidelines about the embargo (https://www.jdb.uzh.ch/id/eprint/23071/) Western countries is present. In spring 2016, we administered a questionnaire to local farmers in Central Italy to measure the association be tween wildlife value orientations and illegal killing of wildlife, in response to crop or poultry damages (n = 352). We obtained the prevalence of illegal killing with the Randomized Response Technique, ensuring complete individual protection to respondents. We modeled the effect of wildlife value orientations over illegal wildlife killing with a Bayesian logistic regression for three taxa: the red fox, the crested porcupine, and birds, as most of persecution by farmers in our study site is exerted towards them. We found that domination predicted illegal killing for the red fox only. On the other hand, mutualism predicted tolerance towards all the study taxa. Combining wildlife value orientations and the Randomized Response Technique can be a promising approach to explore human-wildlife conflicts and their consequences. Furthermore, the Mediterranean setting of our study filled existing geographical gaps about wildlife value orientations in Europe. We encourage future research on the application of wildlife value orientations to conflicts involving wildlife and extensive farmers, i.e., at large scale, as well as future large-scale research on wildlife value orientations in Europe

Invasive species management requires practical evidence of the impacts of introduced species over ecosystem structure and functioning. Theoretical ecology and empirical data support the potential of introduced mammals to drive native species to extinction, indeed the majority of practical evidence comes from insular environments, where conditions may differ from the mainland. We analyzed the effects of an introduced lagomorph, the eastern cottontail Sylvilagus floridanus on two native mammals, the European hare Lepus europaeus and the red fox Vulpes vulpes. We used relative abundances collected over 8 years at 30 protected areas in Italy. A generalized linear mixed model was fit to test various hypotheses about the relationships between cottontails, foxes and climatic conditions over the abundance of native hares. In our model, hare and cottontail abundances did not show a negative relationship and we believe that no direct competition occurs between the two species. However, the relationship between fox and hare abundances, positive when cottontails were scarce, became more and more negative as cottontails increased: this supports the hypothesis that indirect dynamics like apparent competition exists between the two lagomorphs. Climatic conditions, expressed through the North Atlantic Oscillation, did not affect the relationship between cottontail and hare abundances. As the impact of parasites on mammal populations is generally climate dependent, we believe that cottontails do not play a direct role in the cycle of parasites affecting hares. Our results provide a clue that an invasive mammal, the eastern cottontail, is modifying the predator-prey relationship between two native species in a non-insular environment. The existence of such dynamics should lead wildlife managers to account for the effect of introduced species in their decision making, directing control activities on cottontails and not on native foxes.

The European Union (EU) has recently adopted a regulation on invasive alien species that foresees the possibility of developing lists of species of National Concern. We developed a prioritisation process for alien mammals already established in Italy, but not yet included in the EU list (n = 6 species) and a systematic horizon-scanning procedure to obtain ranked lists for those species that are already introduced worldwide or traded in Italy (n = 213). Experts were asked to score these species, by evaluating their likelihood of establishment and spread and the magnitude of their potential impacts on biodiversity, economy, human-health and society. The manageability of each species was also evaluated, both for the proritisation and the horizon-scanning processes. We produced five lists that ranked species according to their potential spread and impacts and their manageability. These will allow policy-makers to select outputs according to a balance between risk assessment and risk management, establishing priorities for alien species management at the national level.

1. Collisions with vehicles are a major cause of wildlife mortality. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries enforced lockdowns that reduced vehicular traffic and consequently wildlife-vehicle collisions. However, no study has yet explored how traffic-related mortality declined across multiple species of wildlife, leaving doubts about the species-specific impact of COVID-19 on wildlife ecology and management. 2. We modelled how two lockdowns (in spring and autumn 2020) influenced wildlifevehicle collisions throughout Slovenia, in central Europe, by comparing weekly roadkill in 2020 with 2010-2019 time series for European roe deer (n = 53,259), red fox (n = 9,889), Eurasian badger (n = 5,170), brown hare (n = 5,050), stone marten (n = 4,267), wild boar (n = 1,188) and red deer (n = 1,088). 3. During the spring lockdown (16 March-30 April 2020), we observed far fewer collisions than expected for roe deer and badgers. During the autumn lockdown (20 October-31 December 2020), we observed significantly fewer collisions for roe deer and wild boar, but we noted an excess of collisions with badgers. Traffic reduction had a major influence on roe deer, whose roadkill decreased between 156 and 321 individuals.

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