Figure 1.

Study area colored according to land uses (left) and its geographical position within Italy (right): on the right, study area (black), within Lombardy (gray) in Northern Italy. On the left, forests in green, urban areas in dark–gray, farmland and other open habitats in gray, lakes, wetlands, and rivers in blue. Black lines represent main roads. Different colored dots represent sampling populations (SPs), while numbers refer to sampling locations (LOCPRIOR) with the first number indicating the SP which the sampling location pertain to. In the lower inset map, dots on the elevation map of the study area represent the Prealpine distribution of the Fire Salamander in Lombardy (the darker is the background, the higher is the elevation; from Di Cerbo and Razzetti 2004).