The Maghreb miniopter (Miniopterus maghrebensis), a bat hitherto considered exclusive to North Africa, has been identified for the first time in Europe, on the island of Lampedusa. The discovery, published in the journal Mammalian Biology, is the result of the joint work of a team of researchers from CNR - specifically the IRSA institutes in Verbania and IRET in Florence - together with the National Center for Biodiversity. The scholars conducted an in-depth study of the local chiropterofauna, using non-invasive methods such as acoustic monitoring, exploration of underground shelters and genetic analysis of guano samples. The goal was to elucidate the faunal composition of an area that has been little explored to date but is of great conservation interest. “Lampedusa has particularly fragile ecosystems, sensitive to even the slightest climatic variations,” explained Fabrizio Gili, CNR-IRSA researcher. “Increasingly scarce water resources, together with the impact of tourism and environmental changes, threaten the survival of several bat species, some of which have never been studied systematically”.