Savi's pine vole (Microtus savii) is a rodent species of the Cricetidae family, inhabiting southern European agroecosystems. It is considered to be the main cause of rodent-attributed damage in Italy. To achieve an effective management, detailed knowledge of this species is needed. However, the available information about this species is fragmentary and incomplete. In this paper, the existing knowledge of Savi's pine vole taxonomy, reproduction, population dynamics, habitat and food preferences is reviewed in order to organise available information and identify priority areas of future research. Some of the changes in farming practices that have occurred in recent decades may have increased the impact of Savi's pine vole populations in crop fields. To manage this pest species effectively, an integrated strategy is recommended (involving habitat management, trapping and, when appropriate, the use of rodenticides). The apparent lack of cyclical population outbreaks and the relatively small litter size and long gestation and interpartum period of this species suggest that it could be more manageable than other vole species, while its strict herbivorous diet, stable population size in open habitats and wide distribution seem to indicate it as an ideal model species for risk assessment studies.

Vantage point counts (VPCs) are adopted to estimate the densities of roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) populations for harvest management. Thus, counts should be performed only within blocks without woodlands where it is possible to relate counts to block sizes. Alternatively, if VPCs are simply carried out on all blocks in a study region, the expectations of total counts could be used as relative abundance indices. In most cases, surveying all blocks is too demanding because of the number of observers required, time, and organization. Therefore, VPCs are performed only on a portion of the blocks, and relative abundance indices are estimated from these counts. If the blocks are selected by means of probabilistic sampling schemes, then statistically sound estimators of total count expectations can be adopted. Therefore, the estimation of the sampling errors, construction of confidence intervals, and assessment of change are possible, together with a post hoc power analysis for evaluating the probability of failing to detect a change in the expectations. Our objective in this study is to consider sampling strategies that allow the performance of all these statistical steps and to check the performance of these strategies on a hunting district located in Tuscany, Italy, in which all the blocks were surveyed in 2013 and 2014. The results provide evidence of the imprecision of the estimators. Even for large sampling fractions of 40-50%, the relative standard errors never decreased below 20%, and the corresponding powers in detecting a change of 30% at a level a ¼ 0:05 were <0.65. Our results highlight the need for efficient and robust alternative strategies. Ó 2017 The Wildlife Society.

The study of animal diet and feeding behaviour is a fundamental tool for the illustration of the ecological role of species in the ecosystem. However, size and quality of food intake samples make it hard for researchers to describe the diet composition of many small species. In our study, we exploited genomic tools for the analysis of the diet composition of the Savi’s pine vole (Microtus savii) using DNA barcoding and qPCR techniques for the identification of ingested plant species retrieved from stomach contents. In contrast with previous studies, we found that, despite being a fossorial species, the Savi’s pine vole is a selective feeder that undergoes intense superficial activity in search for food. In addition, our study shows that with a a priori knowledge of the candidate plant species included in animal diet, qPCR is a powerful tool to assess presence/absence, frequency of occurrence and electivity of ingested species. We conclude that this approach offers new opportunities to implement the analysis of food selection in small animals, thereby revealing a detailed picture of plant-animal interactions.

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Savi’s pine vole, Microtus savii, is the most widespread Italian vole species, an important rodent pest in agriculture and yet one of the least studied species. One of the reasons for this gap in knowledge is that members of this species are quite difficult to capture with standard trapping procedures, being fossorial and rarely active aboveground. For this reason, we developed a protocol that maximizes trapping success. This method requires the identification of active tunnel holes and the placement of traps directly in front of the exits. We also compared capture and recapture rates of Savi’s pine voles in three different trap types: Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), Longworth and Ugglan. If properly equipped with food and nesting material, INRA, Longworth and Ugglan traps showed similar capture rates, but the recapture rate of Ugglan traps was the highest of the three kinds of traps. These results, in combination with the species’ fossorial and social habits, lead us to conclude that Ugglan traps are the best suited for studies on Savi’s pine voles. Our results may have implications for planning and implementing management strategies based on traps rather than rodenticides, as well as field studies on other fossorial small mammals.