Recent land use changes, namely the intensification of agriculture and forestry as well as the abandonment of traditional grassland management methods, have resulted in the decline of butterfly diversity in Europe. Appropriate management of butterfly habitats is thus required in order to reverse this negative trend. The aim of our study was to review the available literary information concerning the effects of various types of management on European butterflies of conservation concern, and to provide practical recommendations for the management of butterfly habitats. Since vegetation succession is a major threat to butterfly populations, there is a need for activities to suppress this process. Extensive grazing and rotational mowing, which imitate the traditional way of meadow use, appear to be the most suitable management in this respect. Both grazing and mowing should optimally be of low intensity and follow a mosaic design, with different land fragments being successively used at different times. Habitat disturbance through trampling, either associated with grazing or various sporting activities (hiking, biking, horse riding), or through occasional small-area burning, also prove to be beneficial for many butterflies. In the case of woodland species, maintaining open habitats within forests (glades, clearings, wide road verges) and thinning forest stands is recommended. Among the unfavourable management activities identified, the most harmful are afforestation of open lands and drainage works. Therefore, such activities must be stopped at butterfly sites in order to ensure the effective conservation of species of conservation concern.

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Synanthropic invasive silverfish, Ctenolepisma longicaudatum, has been recently reported to cause nuisance in the indoor environment in many European countries. To get more details on the species distribution, the species occurrence was monitored by the authors in the countries where establishment of C. longicaudatum has been revealed in the last years. In Czechia, 20 findings from 14 municipalities in eight regions were recorded within the last three years. In the United Kingdom, 49 cases, including the first occurrence in Scotland, were recorded. Five cases were recorded for the Republic of Ireland. Domestic settings were the main habitat in the study countries (50.0% for the Czechia and Ireland and 36.8% for the United Kingdom). Regarding C. longicaudatum control, the standard silverfish strategy fails, and the use of insecticidal baits complemented by dust insecticides was suggested as the most promising approach. To reveal presence of C. longicaudatum in Europe, the search of literature, social platforms and databases on invasive species was conducted. According to these sources, the species is known from majority of European countries, when the high increase of records in recent decade was detected.

In recent decades, the world has witnessed a remarkable resurgence of bedbugs (Hemiptera: Cimicidae). Although populations of the common bedbug, Cimex lectularius L., expanded in temperate regions of its original distribution, the tropical bedbug, C. hemipterus (F.), increased its abundance in warmer regions, where it also had been historically distributed. However, C. hemipterus has recently been observed to be expanding to other areas, e.g. North Australia, Middle East, the United States and Russia. In other parts of Europe, few sporadic and ephemeral introductions of C. hemipterus were recorded until recently. We conducted an extensive sampling of European bedbug populations starting in 2002 and found that C. hemipterus has recently become locally established. Among 566 examined infestations, nearly all of which involved C. lectularius, C. hemipterus occurred in six infestations collected since 2019. In at least three cases, the social background of inhabitants of the infested properties indicated that tropical bedbugs likely spread within local communities. Using cytochrome oxidase subunit I, we linked five of the infestations to the most common haplotype found globally, and one to an African haplotype. In all infestations, we observed two kdr‐associated mutations in the sodium channel gene, which are also commonly found across the world.

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This study evaluated the repellent effect of three essential oils against females of Ixodes ricinus, which is considered to be the main arthropod disease vector in Europe. The essential oils could be regarded as user-and environment-friendly alternatives to synthetic repellents. As a comparison sample, the most widely used synthetic repellent DEET was used. All the tested oils exhibited moderate to high initial repellency of 65-85% 5 min after application. The testing was terminated after 80 min, when lavender and eucalyptus repelled 45% and 15% of ticks, respectively. No effect of orange oil was observed after a 20-min mark. The effect of DEET was found to be high and stable (95-100%) throughout the experiment. This study thus revealed that the investigated oils are not as effective as DEET. On the other hand, especially lavender showed an interesting potential as an alternative repellent for outdoor activities of shorter duration. Our study is focused on comparison of repellency effect and duration between three essential oils and synthetic repellent 10% DEET, when used as a timestable control, against host-seeking I. ricinus females. It should be noted that not all essential oils are safe for human use, and several types have even been described as allergens or mutagens (T h o r s e l l et al., 2006). Our primary intention was to test essential oils that have some repellency effect and which are also 'user-friendly' and do not endanger human health. We therefore selected eucalyptus oil, lavender oil, and orange oil and statistically compared the efficiency of these oils with the effectiveness of DEET. maTeRIaL aND meTHODsAdult females of I. ricinus were obtained from a commercial source (Insect Services, Berlin, Germany). Prior to analysis, all ticks were kept unfed for one week to acclimate in polypropylene tubes (with strips of filter paper inside) stored in a desiccator outfitted with a plastic cup with soaked cotton wool (to maintain high humidity) at room temperature. Essential oils were obtained from Hofigal (Bucharest, Romania), which also provided chromatographic profiles -see Table 1. The synthetic DEET was obtained from Vertellus (Herriard, UK). Prior to conducting the bioassays, all repellent samples were diluted in diethyl ether (Penta, Chrudim, Czech Republic) to a 10% test concentration.To evaluate repellency, we used a novel bioassay based on methods previously described by C a r r o l l et al. (2011), K r ö b e r et al. (2013), and da C a m a r a et al. (2015). The experimental and control bioassays consisted of two concentric circles (Ø19 cm and Ø15 cm) drawn on an A4-size sheet of cardboard. In the experimental arena, the 4 cm wide zone between these circles was treated evenly with 1 ml of the investigated repellent solution and the same area in the control arena was treated with diethyl ether only. The cardboard sheets were treated separately with each of the three essential oils (orange, eucalyptus, lavender) and DEET. Five ticks were first placed in the control arena (without repellent) ...

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Background Metapopulation persistence in fragmented landscapes is assured by dispersal of individuals between local populations. In this scenario the landscape topography, although usually neglected, may have an important role in shaping dispersal throughout the matrix separating habitat patches. Due to inter-sexual differences in optimal reproductive strategies, i.e., males maximizing the number of mating opportunities and females maximizing the offspring survival chances, topography-related constraints are expected to exert a different effect on male and female dispersal behaviour. We tested sex-biased topography effects on butterfly dispersal, with the following hypotheses: (1) females are constrained by topography in their movements and avoid hill crossing; (2) male dispersal is primarily driven by two-dimensional spatial structure of the habitat patches (i.e. their geometric locations and sizes) and little influenced by topography. Methods Following intensive mark-recapture surveys of Maculinea (= Phengaris) nausithous and M. teleius within a landscape characterised by an alternation of hills and valleys, we investigated sex-specific patterns in their inter-patch movement probabilities derived with a multi-state recapture model. In particular, we (1) analysed the fit of dispersal kernels based on Euclidean (= straight line) vs. topography-based (= through valley) distances; (2) compared movement probabilities for the pairs of patches separated or not by topographic barriers; and (3) tested the differences in the downward and upward movement probabilities within the pairs of patches. Results Euclidean distances between patches proved to be a substantially stronger predictor of inter-patch movement probabilities in males, while inter-patch distances measured along valleys performed much better for females, indicating that the latter tend to predominantly follow valleys when dispersing. In addition, there were significantly lower probabilities of movements across hills in females, but not in males. Conclusions Both above results provide support for the hypothesis that topography restricts dispersal in females, but not in males. Since the two sexes contribute differently to metapopulation functioning, i.e., only female dispersal can result in successful (re)colonisations of vacant patches, the topography effects exerted on females should be considered with particular attention when landscape management and conservation actions are designed in order to maintain the functional connectivity of metapopulation systems.