There is a lack of awareness that the current biodiversity knowledge has a long history of individual and institutional scientific enquiries well before the term was coined. Here, we deal specifically with the ornithological work coordinated by Antonio Carruccio, who was Head of the Institute of Zoology at Rome University from 1883 to 1914. An advocate of zoological systematics, Carruccio oversaw the establishment of rich collections in the Zoological Museum with a strong emphasis on the Roman Collection, which he established. In 1892, he also founded the Society for Zoological Studies which encouraged, for the first time in Rome, the growth of a wider audience of researchers, both professionally-trained and amateurs, interested in biodiversity. The legacy of Carruccio’s work was long-lasting and includes some interesting aspects, such as the collaboration between the academic world and interested citizens or the birth of a conservation interest, that deserves a greater attention by current generations of historians, zoologists and conservationists.

Bird collections, conservation, Francesco Chigi, hunting, Museo civico di Zoologia di Roma, taxonomy

Natural history collections, both public and private, have been the main tools and goals of the first systematic surveys of Earth’s biodiversity (Pyke and Ehrlich 2010). The Italian Peninsula, especially in its central-southern regions, was amongst the last European regions to be biologically explored for a variety of reasons, including the political instability that pre-dated Italy’s political unity during the Risorgimento years (Gippoliti and Groves 2018). Before the fall of the Pope’s temporal power in 1870, biological research in Rome was carried out often in isolation from the major Italian and European centres of research. Despite this, Carlo Luciano Bonaparte (1803–1857; Fig. 1), the nephew of the French Emperor, established in Rome a programme of research on the vertebrate diversity of the Italian Peninsula (Bonaparte 1832–1841) that remained mainly a one-man project (Violani and Barbagli 2003). The same fate surrounded the work of Massimiliano Lezzani, a Bonaparte’s student, (1820?-1897) who worked at an Italian bird collection (Lezzani 1866) which was acquired by the Zoological Museum of Rome University in March 1875 without ever being studied. In 1883, the Chair of Zoology at the Regia Università in Rome was assigned to Professor Antonio Carruccio (Cagliari 1839 – Rome 1923; Fig. 2), who was already professor of Zoology at Modena University and had graduated in Medicine and Natural History at Cagliari University. In 1860, he took part in Garibaldi’s “Spedizione dei mille” (one-thousand-men expedition) that led to the unification of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Italian southern regions) to the northern regions and, thus, to the Kingdom of Italy. Carruccio worked at the Universities of Cagliari and Florence and at Modena as a full professor (1872–1883). He was a strong advocate of the importance of zoological collections as the basis for faunistic and systematic research. As a professor in Rome, Carruccio immediately started a two-track programme with the aim of establishing a nationally relevant Zoological Museum in the new capital of Italy and, within it, the Collezione Romana, a newly-established regional collection of the animal diversity from the Roman Province (Carruccio 1888).

To our knowledge, despite a recent surge of interest for biodiversity research in Italy, there has been a limited discussion concerning historical zoological research and its contribution to the discovery of the fauna of what is now known as the most species-rich country of the European continent (Blasi et al. 2005). In the present contribution, we want to investigate and analyse the relevance of the ornithological research at the Museo Zoologico della Reale Università di Roma (thereafter MZUR), both at local and global scale and stress how Carruccio was successful in creating for three decades a community of researchers which included not only scholars and naturalists, but also wealthy members of society. The recent discovery of a specimen of the rare and threatened New Caledonian Owlet-nightjar Aegotheles savesi in the collections of the Museo civico di Zoologia (thereafter MCZR), previously known only from its holotype (Ekstrom et al. 2002), further demonstrates the importance of Carruccio’s efforts. In the present paper, particular relevance is given to the importance of studies on local birds as the integral reclamation of marshlands around Rome, imposed by the attempts to the eradication of malaria (Celli 1909; Fig. 3), deeply changed the regional landscape. The reclamation of the Ostia marshes started around 1880 and was followed by several others, including the final drainage of the Maccarese Marshes in 1925 (Valenti 2023; Fig. 4). Roman hunters and ornithologists became witnesses of these environmental changes and their effects on bird abundance and diversity. Yet, their observations and the specimens, which they collected and have been preserved to this day, represent historical data that could be crucial to develop both a sounder understanding of communities’ response to anthropogenic factors and an effective protected area system around Rome which prioritises biodiversity (see Battisti and Gippoliti (2004)).

Figure 1. 

Bust of Carlo Luciano Bonaparte (Paris 1803–1857), located at the Museo Civico di Zoologia in Rome.

Figure 2. 

Prof. Antonio Carruccio while at Modena University.

Figure 3. 

Map of the Rome Province at the beginning of 20^th century (kindly drawn by Luca Lupi).

Figure 4. 

“Caccia in palude a Maccarese” (“Hunting in the swamp of Maccarese”) by Enrico Coleman (1887).

Carruccio immediately systematised the limited spaces available for the MZUR in the Sapienza Palace by creating a separate hall for the Provincial collection. He was already a strong advocate of regional collections (Carruccio 1882) which, at the time, represented the only opportunity to train surgeons and naturalists on local faunas, including parasites and agricultural pests. Despite the poor labelling of the ‘old’ specimens, Carruccio investigated the geographic origin of each specimen to unambiguously ascertain its origin from the Province territory. He retrieved data concerning the majority of the important Marquis Massimiliano Lazzani bird collection (310 specimens of 221 species acquired in March 1875) and other valuable specimens, such as the African houbara bustard Chlamydotis undulata collected by the Duke of Sermoneta at Campagnano Romano around 1870 (Carruccio 1892). Carruccio also edited the medical-biological journal Lo Spallanzani, where he and his collaborators published the records of collections concerning mainly the Roman Province (Carruccio 1882), but also exotic localities (Vinciguerra 1892) and specific notes, such as one on two hybrids between Fringilla coelebs and Fringilla montifringilla (Carruccio 1891). In 1887, specimens of Falconiformes were studied by Giacinto Martorelli (1855–1917) from Turin, who published a brief note on a valuable specimen of Falco islandicus (Martorelli 1887) which was later reclassified as Falco saker. When Carruccio published his first record of the Rome Provincial bird collection in 1888, roughly 600 specimens belonging to 152 species were listed (Carruccio 1888). Ten years later, the specimens were roughly 1,500 and belonged to 307 species (Carruccio 1898). In 1892, the Roman Society of Zoological Studies (Società Romana di Studi Zoologici) was established with Carruccio serving as President and the journal Bollettino della Società Romana di Studi Zoologici was launched.

Carruccio was fully aware that, without the contribution of amateur naturalists outside of the academic world, zoological collections and research in Rome would have not been successful (Lepri 1923). Ornithology was possibly the sector which benefitted the most from this approach as hunting and private bird collections were already a widespread hobby of the noble class not only in Rome (see Giovacchini (2023)). It should be highlighted that the efforts in assuring publications of faunistic data not only responded to scientific standards scarcely followed in Rome (see Diorio (1860) for a rare exception relating to an Arabian bustard Chlamydotis macqueenii found in the Roman market and at the time reported as C. undulata), but assured a certain degree of public acknowledgement to the collaborators who encouraged imitation. According to data provided by Leone De Sanctis, in 1873, the whole bird collection consisted of 2,000 mounted bird skins (Anonymous 1873: 61), which had been rarely used for scientific purposes. One of the main problems Carruccio met was the recruitment of scientific specialists capable of utilising the scientific potential of the collections and of serving as ‘honorary’ or ‘informal’ curators of the different collections, a duty that could not be a ‘one-man’ job.

Rome’s Zoological Society was an important forum for discussing the establishment of a national law regulating hunting in Italy, as the territories had maintained their respective laws which pre-dated the national unification. Angelini represented the Roman society at the Genoa Congress on hunting, later publishing an interesting paper on “Hunting and its relationships with the conservation of wild game, with agriculture and science” (Angelini 1894). On 7 March of the same year, a meeting was held at the University ‘La Sapienza’ Palace, organised by the “Società Romana per gli Studi Zoologici and Società dei Cacciatori in Roma” (Roman hunters society) with the aim of discussing the “Angelini’s report” (Carruccio 1894b). During the following years, concern grew in Italy for the conservation of birds, other taxa and landscapes. It should be stressed that ornithological extinctions, such as those of the great auk Pinguinus impennis and the migratory dove Ectopistes migratorius (see Chigi (1936c); Halliday (1980)), played a key role in increasing an awareness of conservation: “In the last century, great emotion was aroused by the disappearance from the face of the world of two species rich in individuals until shortly before their extinction” (Chigi 1936c: 3).

In 1911, an important scientific initiative aimed at discussing conservation priorities in Italy was held with both botanists and zoologists. The botanist Renato Pampanini (1875–1949) wrote the paper “For the protection of Italian Flora” (Pampanini 1911) for the Bollettino della Società Botanica Italiana, while Lino Vaccari (1873–1951) was invited to Rome to hold the conference “For the protection of the Italian Fauna” (Vaccari 1912) which was published by the Società Zoologica Italiana.

In Rome, the man destined to become the heir of this emerging field was certainly Prince Francesco Chigi della Rovere, who appeared, together with Ettore Arrigoni degli Oddi and Prof. Alessandro Ghigi (1875–1970) of Bologna University, as one of the Italian representatives of the International Committee for Birds Protection in 1927. In those years, Chigi established an ornithological station in his private estate at Parco del Fusano, near the coast. In 1933, he co-authored a book entitled “Gli uccelli amici dell’agricoltore” (Birds friend of the peasant) (Sindacato Nazionale fascisti dei Tecnici Agricoli 1933) with contributions of Oscar de Beaux, Angiolo Del Lungo, Carlo Meschini and Giuseppe Urbani and later published a paper about the importance of maintaining a strong link between zoology and hunting through the creation of provincial zoological committees (Chigi 1935). In 1934, he started publishing the naturalistic journal Rassegna Faunistica aimed at reaching a wider audience and thus richly illustrated. This journal was short-lived, yet it remained a pioneer’s attempt for a wider naturalistic education. Conservation was one of the themes of this journal, hosting important contributions on the conservation of monk seal Monachus monachus and alpine brown bear Ursus arctos (Del Lungo 1935; Gallarati Scotti 1937) and an interesting review of extinctions entitled “La morte delle specie animali” (namely “the death of animal species”; Chigi, (1936c)). Other papers by Chigi include notes on the behaviour of the kentish plover Fratinus alexandrinus (Chigi, 1936b) – today a local and national conservation priority (e.g. Giovacchini et al. (2022)) – and the management of an artificial waterbody for the conservation of waterfowl (Chigi 1936a, 1937) which is still managed as a natural reserve (Battisti 2006; Rizzo and Battisti 2009; Marzialetti et al. 2024). Already in the 1920s, Francesco Chigi may be the symbol of the passage from the pure hunter-collector stage to that of the birdwatcher and preservationist. More than a paradigm shift, it seems to us that Carruccio’s emphasis on zoological research resulted quite naturally in an increased interest in what we call now ‘biodiversity’ and conservation that passed through an accurate knowledge of bird systematics. This seems to re-affirm a specificity of the Italian conservation movement that predates modern Conservation Biology (Soulé 1986).

The “Collezione Romana” of the MZUR is the most original contribution of Carruccio’s vision. He not only created a public collection at the University, but was also instrumental through the “Società Romana per gli Studi Zoologici” to encourage a more scientifically-correct approach to private bird collections following the steps of Enrico Giglioli (1845–1909), who had established in Florence the national vertebrate collection ‘Collezione dei Vertebrati Italiani’ (Giglioli 1909). Therefore, several private collections of great scientific value were incorporated into the MZUR or later in the MCZR providing a permanent and unique archive of biodiversity data about Latium’s birds. In the first volume of the Bollettino, we found records of 28 specimens – mostly ‘Roman’ – representing 26 species that were donated to a ‘Societal collection’ by several members such as Marquis Sacchetti, Count Falconieri di Carpegna, Marquis Patrizi, dr Carlo De Filippi, don Giuseppe Speranzini and others (Carruccio 1892d: 222). These efforts led to an incredible number of ‘first’ records that were regularly published (Zapparoli and Cignini 2005). The Bollettino also provided information about notable records from other private collections, such as the one of Prince Giuseppe Aldobrandini, who was not a member of the society and of Francesco Chigi, who was a member (see also Table 1). The ‘Cronaca di caccia’ (namely “Hunting chronicle”) sections provided interesting data about seasonal occurrences and relevant captures. The second volume of the Bollettino reported the capture for the King’s collection of a young white-tailed sea eagle H. albicilla in December 1892 at Castelporziano, as well as an early abundance of ruffs Philomachus pugnax on the plains near Ponte Galeria (Rome) in January 1893 (Falconieri di Carpegna 1893b) and the scavenging of white-tailed sea eagles on a dead cow at Isola Sacra (Fiumicino, Rome; Falconieri di Carpegna (1893d)). Carruccio and his collaborators also studied specimens and records from the University historical collections, especially Lezzani’s. This study had remarkable results as it allows us to appreciate valuable records as those of two black woodpeckers Dryocopus martius (contra Brunelli and Fraticelli 2010) that were verbally confirmed to originate – ante 1875– from the ‘Selva di Cisterna’ in the Pontine Marshes (Patrizi-Montuoro 1908). Lepri pointed out that, while the species was unrecorded in the Pontine Marshes at his time, these records should indicate dispersion from the Lepini Mountains that, in the meantime, had been heavily deforested (Patrizi-Montoro 1908: 58; Battisti et al. 2015).

Although Rome became an important national ornithological centre only in 1937 when the Arrigoni degli Oddi collection was donated to the national government and sent to the newly-established MCZR inside the Giardino Zoologico (Gippoliti 2023), it is not clear to what extent birds from other Italian regions were represented in the MZUR. The Lezzani collection, while mainly ‘regional’, also included specimens received by other naturalists, such as two Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax and one P. graculus received from Ascoli Piceno (Marche, central Italy) by Antonio Orsini (Carruccio 1892b). In 1886, Faustino Manzone reported the first Uria alca collected in Italy, exactly in 1883 in Pollenzo (Piedmont) at the confluence of the Tanaro and Stura Rivers (Manzone 1886). Although Carruccio reported some rare gifts from King Vittorio Emanuele III, such as a Gypaetus barbatus from Valdieri (Piedmont) and a Cygnus bewickii from San Rossore (Tuscany; Carruccio (1902b, 1903)), birds from San Rossore (Pisa, Tuscany) were regularly sent to the MZUR by King Vittorio Emanuele III and Queen Elena. According to some labels recently found in the MCZR, a collection of mainly Italian birds from the Principe di Piemonte (Umberto, the son of Vittorio Emanuele III) was also received by the MZUR at an unknown date. Carlo De Fiore, a biologist from Calabria who died prematurely in 1892, sent a small collection from Maida (Catanzaro). Guido Falconieri di Carpegna sent to the MZUR some rare birds from the Pesaro Province (Marche, central Italy), such as a male Emberiza melanocephala Scopoli, 1769 he took in 1891 (Falconieri di Carpegna 1892b).

Due to his origins from Cagliari, Caruccio had several contacts in Sardinia and received several specimens from the island. In 1894, he reported a Rissa tridactyla taken at Stagno di Pilo near Sassari (Carruccio 1894a). A note on the possible decline of the purple gallinule Porphyrio porphyrio in Sardinia was based on the arrival of two short-lived purple gallinules sent by Dr. Antonio Dessì from the Stagno l’Aratili di San Pietro (Carruccio 1899). In another paper on the eagles of the MZUR, a Bonelli’s eagle Hieraatus fasciatus from Sardinia (Cagliari) is cited as donated by the naturalist Paolo Magretti in 1885 (Carruccio 1893b).

Finally, a note concerning some problematic specimens ‘from Sarzana’ (Liguria) found in the Magni-Griffi collection, highlighted that this collection had been acquired by the MZUR (Carazzi 1912).

It seems a paradox that, although Italy slowly began colonising some African regions in the 1880s, Rome played a secondary role in the study of colonial fauna (Gippoliti 2005). Owing to the retirement of Carruccio in 1914, the Zoological Institute reduced its activities in systematic zoology and changed completely its activities by endorsing only experimental biology (Capanna 1989). Therefore, few specimens were received from the Eritrea colony and even less from Benadir (later to become Italian Somalia) and these often remained unstudied (see Gippoliti and Amori (2011)). However, in 1890, one of the first bird collections from Assab (Eritrea) was published (Vinciguerra 1890). The birds had been collected in 1884 by Count Pietro Antonelli (1853–1901) during a political mission in Ethiopia and then donated to the Istituto Massimo in Rome, before they reached the MZUR through an exchange. There was a note on the Abdim’s stork in Eritrea (Falconeri di Carpegna 1900), while the few specimens sent from Benadir in 1920 by Saverio Patrizi Montoro (son of Filippo) remained undocumented. As in other Italian museums, the MZUR had received a small part of the Orazio Antinori collection made in Shoa (Ethiopia) during the “Spedizione Italiana ai Laghi Equatoriali” (1876–1882; Marangoni et al. (2009)). Carruccio obtained from the same Region the Leopoldo Traversi collection which had been previously studied by Giglioli in Florence (Giglioli 1888).

The value and context of the exotic bird collection in Rome has been overshadowed also because many historical facts have not yet been properly investigated. Carruccio’s goal of making his museum amongst the most important in Italy had to face basic problems such as the general lack in Rome of specialised literature and expertise about much of the global biodiversity. He dealt with these issues in his first account of a great result: the donation of the zoological collections set up by the Italian Royal Navy personnel during the corvette Caracciolo circumnavigation of the world, 1881 to 1884, which included 249 bird specimens (Carruccio 1885). Carruccio’s dedication to his museum is highlighted by the fact that, after the death of Admiral De Amezaga, he obtained from the widow and daughter a few, but important bird specimens (n = 16) which they had in their home (Carruccio 1888), including several birds of paradise (Astrapia gularis, Cicinnurus regius, Diphyllodes speciosa, Dreparnornis albertisii, Epimachus maximus, Lophorina superba etc.). Smaller collections were also sent by the surgeons of the Royal Navy, as those made by Teofilo Moscatelli and Giovanni Petella while travelling on the Flavio Gioia (1883–1886) in South America, especially in Perù. As evidenced elsewhere, zoological collections from South America need to be better studied as they represent an important and often overlooked heritage of many Italian museums, Rome included (Gippoliti and Castiglia 2020). It is not casual the two bird species described by Angelini are both from South America (Angelini 1901, 1905c; Lepri 1914). Although never published, Carruccio obtained in 1909 also a Gallardo collection – probably from Angel Gallardo (1867–1934; about 500 skins) – from Argentina which remains practically unknown to the scientific world. Angelini reported some species in the meetings of 17 May and 22 July 1909, such as Speotyto cunicularia, Busarellus nigricollis, Chrysoptilus melanochlorus cristatus, Trogon surucua, Colaptes agricola etc. (Carruccio 1910: 11 and 15). A smaller collection of Mr. Silvio Bondimai (21 skins) made in Missiones (Argentina) had been studied by Angelini, but reported only at the genus level (Carruccio 1910: 21). Perhaps 72 additional skins were received in 1912 always from Bondimai (S. Gippoliti, personal data). It should be also noted that several American birds were already present at the time of the Pontificial Archygimnasium, including many donated by Pope Pio IX. In 1883 a collection was received from Paraguay donated by Consul Luigi Petich. In 1898, King Umberto I (Falconieri di Carpegna 1899b) donated a collection (80 species) from the Indo-Oriental Region which he received from the Sarawak Museum as a gift from Sir Charles Brooke, the Raja of Sarawak. Other specimens of multiple origins were exchanged with natural history cabinets of schools, such as the Vatican Gymnasium (Fig. 8) and the Istituto Tecnico in Viterbo.

In the case of the Afrotropical Region – with the exception of the Horn of Africa – only the Czech explorer Emil Holub sent a small collection in 1894 from the southern Africa sub-region.

An important collection of 357 specimens, mostly of exotic origin and previously held at the Moncalieri Castle (Salvadori 1902), was received by Vittorio Emanuele III and studied by Falconieri di Carpegna (1902b). Despite the considerable value of the specimens donated – among these a female of the extinct huia Heteralecha acutirostrata from New Zealand (Fig. 9), one Himantopus novaezelandiae, a pair of Sericulus chrysocephalus from Australia, one Apteryx mantelli, two specimens of the extinct Platycercus pulcherrimus and one Ectopistes migratorius – their history was largely undocumented. It also includes one Alca impennis that was reported by the Director of the Museum (Carruccio 1902a) and whose history is relatively well-known (Violani 1975). The Royal collection of Trochilidae (148 specimens; 101 species) was discussed by Angelini who also included the old museum collection (294 specimens; Angelini (1902, 1903d). Less is known about the origins of other exotic birds. Some were received from Luigi Pigorini, the founder of the Museo Nazionale di Etnografia in Rome. Perhaps the last great bird collection of the MZUR was received from Queen Elena between February and March 1922, when it seemed that a new site to make the collections public had been found (S. Gippoliti, personal data).

Figure 8. 

Original label of the Agotheles savesii specimen stating his origin from the ‘Ginnasio Vaticano’ in 1913.

Figure 9. 

Female of Heteralecha acutirostrata presently on exhibit at the MCZ (photo: S. Gippoliti).

Although it was not the only achievement, the regional bird Collection created by Carruccio represents an often overlooked, but valuable result of his 30 years of academic and museological activities (see Monfils et al. (2020)). To our knowledge, there has not been any recent review concerning Carruccio’s museological work, nor any general work on his ornithological activities or about the current ornithological collections held at the MCZR. Already in 1893, Carruccio expressed a warm gratitude to the then young Count Ettore Arrigoni degli Oddi as one of the few Italian ornithologists who openly recognised the relevance of regional collections, such as those established in the University museums of Modena and Rome (Carruccio 1893: 12). In addition, due to the later vicissitudes of the MZUR, it seems that the Carruccio’s efforts in the establishment of a proper regional collection were badly recognised in the following decades. Even in recent times, the Arrigoni degli Oddi collection, held at the MCZR since 1937, has received most of the scientific interest from modern ornithologists (Foschi et al. 1996). The decline of taxonomical research inside the academic world, already a controversial topic in Carruccio’s time, contributed to the overly neglect of bird collections, not only in Rome. Despite this, the establishment of MCZR in 1932 allowed the preservation of most Roman ornithological collections. Interestingly, while biodiversity research gained popularity from the 1980s onward, natural history collections were seen again as an important tool only recently and mainly as a source of precious genetic data that are both geo- and time-referenced. Yet, despite the increasing evidence of their relevance for an infinite number of research questions (Corso et al. 2014; Buchanan et al. 2018), collections and specimens are criticised too often by biologists highlighting the wrong ethical questions (Gippoliti 2018). Furthermore, it seems that the long-term benefits to research that well-maintained collections provided are minimised by the present emphasis on a speedy scientific production that precludes any long-term plan in a time of extreme competition for scarce resources. This is the reason why some researchers have advocated the creation of a nationally-managed biodiversity centre with its own biological collections and the ability to interact with other smaller Italian museums with the aim to improve standards of care, coverage and scientific utilisation (Andreone et al. 2022).

Last but not least, we would like to highlight that, for the drafting of regional checklists and especially to the reporting of accidental species, it is necessary to go back to the original sources and not to secondary sources. In fact, if we were to refer to secondary sources, it is possible to introduce errors in the reporting dates that could be belatedly traced back to the publication of more recent sources.

Rossella Carlini and Carla Marangoni (MCZR) provided much needed help to one of the authors (SG) during the last decades. Giorgio Aimassi provided a useful review of the present paper. Dario Fraschetti kindly reviewed the English language. We wish to thank Luca Lupi, Ivano Ansaloni, Flavio Chigi and Vincenzo Vomero for help with photos and map. Two anonymous reviewers reviewed the first draft of the manuscript.