Domenico Fulgione & Antonino Pollio

The Bullettin of Regional Natural History (formerly “Bollettino della Società dei Naturalisti in Napoli”) was established in 1891. At that time, the team that founded the Società dei Naturalisti in Napoli had proposed to start the publication of a scientific journal that could promote and disseminate scientific knowledge at local and national level. The second aim of the journal was also to make readily accessible information on recent progress in Science by providing short reports on the most interesting running research worldwide. The journal became a place where junior and senior scientists could present their research as equal, and many scholars published their first papers on the Bollettino, that for decades was a reference journal for Natural History Research based on the study of South Italy territories. After about 130 years, we are proud to present the new version of this old journal, that considers the new need to communicate Science, using digital platforms and giving room to extended-data sections. In the last decade, an amazing number of new scientific journals has been released, and this trend raises the question if it is still meaningful to continue the publication of old local journals as the Bollettino. Notwithstanding the deluge of scientific papers, some topic issues seem to suffer for the paucity of information: this is the case of the scientific study of biodiversity.

In a landmark study, Chung Kim and Byrne (2006) stressed that the lack of site-specific data on local biodiversity and species composition of habitat communities is one of the reasons that hinder ecosystem management and conservation practices. The study of local geo- and biodiversity is the focus of this new version of Bollettino, that is opened to worldwide contributors that work on this issue at a site-specific level. Each article will be provided with a short biographic presentation of the research team, with photo of the authors and their “scientific habitat”: labs, office rooms and whatever contribute to give a realistic picture of their work life.

References 
Kim K.C., Byrne L. (2006) Biodiversity loss and the taxonomic bottleneck: Emerging biodiversity science. Ecological Research 21: 794-810.