Ricerc@Sapienza

Malthus believed that rising real wages encouraged earlier marriage, higher fertility and a growing population. But diminishing returns in agriculture meant that an organic economy could not keep pace. Excess labour and rising food prices drove wages down and brought population growth to a halt. Studies testing this hypothesis have focussed on the relationship between population growth and men's wages, typically overlooking women and children's economic activities and influence on demographic outcomes.

Coralligenous reefs are considered as one of the most important benthic ecosystems in the Mediterranean Sea in terms of biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and aesthetic value. Bryozoans deserve special attention within the coralligenous framework fauna: they are among the most common animals, showing high diversity values and playing different functional roles. Distribution, spatial variability, and demographic features of five erect bryozoan taxa Adeonella sp., Myriapora truncata, Pentapora fascialis, Reteporella sp., and Smittina cervicornis were studied in the central Tyrrhenian Sea.

After sequential cycles of urbanization and suburbanization, European cities underwent a (more or less intense) re-urbanization wave. The present study analyzes short-term population dynamics in the core of a large metropolitan region (Milan, northern Italy), providing evidence of spatially-heterogeneous re-urbanization characterized by spatially-complex population growth (or shrinkage) at a local scale. Population dynamics over 1999-2017 were assessed in 88 urban districts partitioning Milan0s municipal area and projected up to 2036 for the same spatial units.

After a long phase of suburbanization promoting economic decentralization and uneven expansion of urban rings, re-urbanization has been observed in an increasing number of European cities. However, a comprehensive analysis of demographic dynamics underlying spatial patterns—and factors—of re-urbanization is still lacking for the European continent.

Promoting children's prosocial behavior is a goal for parents, healthcare professionals, and nations. Does positive parenting promote later child prosocial behavior, or do children who are more prosocial elicit more positive parenting later, or both? Relations between parenting and prosocial behavior have to date been studied only in a narrow band of countries, mostly with mothers and not fathers, and child gender has infrequently been explored as a moderator of parenting-prosocial relations.

Brown bears in the Apennines, central Italy, survive in a precarious conservation status but the reproductive performance of the population has never been formally assessed. Each year, from 2006-2014, we conducted surveys of females with cubs (FWC) to estimate the minimum number of female bears that reproduced and annual productivity in this bear population. We discriminated unique family groups based on simultaneity of sightings, presence of individually recognizable bears, and ad hoc distance-based rules developed using GPS relocations from 11 adult female bears in our study population.

Although knowledge of reproductive parameters is critical to project the chances of persistence of small populations, no data on basic reproductive traits have ever been estimated for the relict Apennine brown bear population (central Italy). From 2005-2014, as part of an ongoing ecological investigation, we compiled re-sight data on marked adult female bears (3 ? n ?