Resultados de investigación

SUMILEN Cruise (29GD20150615) carried out on the Research Vessel García del Cid in 2015, To obtain sediment surveys of the soil of the posidonia oceanica prairies for paleoenvironmental studies and to evaluate the CO2 sequestration capacity of the prairies

HADES Cruise (29GD20150801) carried out on the Research Vessel García del Cid in 2015, In this campaign, the oceanographic ship Garcia del Cid has been supporting the Sarmiento de Gamboa in the Hades project. One of the activities carried out is to spot whales while proceeding to conduct reflection seismic so that there is a space of security between the seismic activities and the Whales.The aim of Hades project is to Investigate the relationship between tectonics, magmatism and sediment dynamics and their influence on geo risks; large earthquakes, sliding volcano slopes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis in the tectonically active area of ​​the Calabrian arch system

MEDIMAX Cruise (29GD20151015) carried out on the Research Vessel García del Cid in 2015, The project studies the maximum of deep chlorophyll in the Mediterranean. MEDIMAX seeks to decipher the biology of the microbiota present in that area of ​​the water column, including viruses

MIFASOL-2 Cruise (29GD20151021) carried out on the Research Vessel García del Cid in 2015, Dissolved organic matter remineralization in the ocean.Microbial and biochemical constraints. Study of the variability of deep ocean communities, their diversity, its genomic potential and the characteristics of dissolved organic matter

PEGASO Cruise (29HE20150102) carried out on the Research Vessel Hespérides in 2015, The main objective is to investigate the planktonic production of aerosol forming substances, mainly trace gases, microgels and biological particles. The study regions will be South Georgia and Weddell Sea, in the Southern Ocean (Antarctica). Both zones have abundant proliferations of plankton, each of which will be studied through Lagrangian monitoring (drifting buoys), entry and exit of the bloom, and intense experiments in 48-hour cycles. Biological, chemical and physical variables will be measured in the surface ocean and in the atmosphere

Arabidopsis_data_279accessions_8jan14, The role that different life-history traits may have in the process of adaptation caused by divergent selection can be assessed by using extensive collections of geographically-explicit populations. This is because adaptive phenotypic variation shifts gradually across space as a result of the geographic patterns of variation in environmental selective pressures. Hence, large-scale experiments are needed to identify relevant adaptive life-history traits as well as their relationships with putative selective agents. We conducted a field experiment with 279 geo-referenced accessions of the annual plant Arabidopsis thaliana collected across a native region of its distribution range, the Iberian Peninsula. We quantified variation in life-history traits throughout the entire life cycle. We built a geographic information system to generate an environmental data set encompassing climate, vegetation and soil data. We analysed the spatial autocorrelation patterns of environmental variables and life-history traits, as well as the relationship between environmental and phenotypic data. Almost all environmental variables were significantly spatially autocorrelated. By contrast, only two life-history traits, seed weight and flowering time, exhibited significant spatial autocorrelation. Flowering time, and to a lower extent seed weight, were the life-history traits with the highest significant correlation coefficients with environmental factors, in particular with annual mean temperature. In general, individual fitness was higher for accessions with more vigorous seed germination, higher recruitment and later flowering times. Variation in flowering time mediated by temperature appears to be the main life-history trait by which A. thaliana adjusts its life history to the varying Iberian environmental conditions. The use of extensive geographically-explicit data sets obtained from field experiments represents a powerful approach to unravel adaptive patterns of variation. In a context of current global warming, geographically-explicit approaches, evaluating the match between organisms and the environments where they live, may contribute to better assess and predict the consequences of global warming., Peer reviewed

Data from: Matrix composition and patch edges influence plant-herbivore interactions in marine landscapes Ecological data from seagrass meadows located in the NW Mediterranean Sea. herbivory_seascape.zip, The functioning of ecosystems can be strongly driven by landscape attributes. Despite its importance, however, our understanding of how landscape influences ecosystem function derives mostly from species richness and abundance patterns, with few studies assessing how these relate to actual functional rates. We examined the influence of landscape attributes on the rates of herbivory in seagrass meadows, where herbivory has been identified as a key process structuring these relatively simple systems. The study was conducted in three representative Posidonia oceanica meadows. The principal herbivores in these meadows are the fish Sarpa salpa and the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus, and we hypothesised that differences in their interaction with landscape attributes would significantly influence herbivory rates. We measured herbivore abundance, herbivory rates, primary production and plant quality (C:N) in seagrass patches embedded either in rock or in sand (matrix attribute), in patches either near or far from a rocky reef (distance attribute) and at the edges and interior of meadows. Our results show that matrix and meadow edges significantly affected the actual levels of herbivory. Herbivory rates were higher in seagrass patches embedded in a rocky matrix compared to those on sand, and herbivory at the centre of seagrass meadows was higher than at the edges. In contrast, patch distance to rocky reefs did not affect herbivory. Neither herbivore abundance nor food quality explained the patterns across different landscape attributes. This suggests that variation in herbivory across the landscape may be related much more to behavioural differences between species in their evaluation of risk, movement, and food preference in relation to the landscape structure. Our results indicate that richness and abundance patterns may mask critical interactions between landscape attributes and species responses, which result in considerable heterogeneity in the way key functional processes like herbivory are distributed across the ecosystem mosaic., Peer reviewed

Genotype data sets Genotypes of the individuals analyzed in Sanchez-Donoso et al., Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 2014. Genotypes Dryad_Sanchez-Donoso et al_Frontiers.xlsx, Interbreeding of two species in the wild implies introgression of alleles from one species into the other only when admixed individuals survive and successfully backcross with the parental species. Consequently, estimating the proportion of first generation hybrids in a population may not inform about the evolutionary impact of hybridization. Samples obtained over a long time span may offer a more accurate view of the spreading of introgressed alleles in a species’ gene pool. Common quail (Coturnix coturnix) populations in Europe have been restocked extensively with farm quails of hybrid origin (crosses with Japanese quails, C. japonica). We genetically monitored a common quail population over 15 years to investigate whether genetic introgression is occurring and used simulations to investigate our power to detect it. Our results revealed that some introgression has occurred, but we did not observe a significant increase over time in the proportion of admixed individuals. However, simulations showed that the degree of admixture may be larger than anticipated due to the limited power of analyses over a short time span, and that observed data was compatible with a low rate of introgression, probably resulting from reduced fitness of admixed individuals. Simulations predicted this could result in extensive admixture in the near future., Peer reviewed

E_arborea__E_australis_Genotypes Genotypes for the populations of Erica arborea and Erica australis in Gil-López et al., 2014, Many habitat specialist species are originally composed of small, discontinuous populations because their habitats are naturally fragmented or patchy. They may have suffered the long-term effects of natural patchiness. Mediterranean heathlands, a representative habitat in the Strait of Gibraltar region, are associated with nutrient-poor, acidic sandstone soils. Sandstone soil patches in the African side of the Strait (Tangier) are, in general, smaller and more scattered than in the European side (Algeciras). In this study, we analyze the effect of this sandstone patchiness on the population genetic diversity and structure of two Erica species from these Mediterranean heathlands that differ in their edaphic specificity, E. australis, sandstone specialist, and E. arborea, generalist. Average levels of within-population genetic diversity and gene flow between populations were significantly lower in Tangier (high sandstone patchiness) than in Algeciras (low patchiness) for the sandstone specialist, whereas no differences between both sides of the Strait were detected in the edaphic generalist. Since most endemic species in Mediterranean heathlands of the Strait of Gibraltar are sandstone specialists, these results highlight an increased vulnerability to loss of genetic diversity and local extinction of the heathland endemic flora in the Tangier side of the Strait of Gibraltar., Peer reviewed

crisp_dna DNA alignment of the cysteine rich secretory protein (CRISP) toxin family LAAO_dna DNA alignment of the L-amino acid oxidase (LAAO) toxin family lectin_dna DNA alignment of the C-type lectin (CTL) toxin family pla2_dna DNA alignment of the phospholipase A2 (PLA2) toxin family serine_protease_dna DNA alignment of the serine protease (SP) toxin family svmp_dna DNA alignment of the snake venom metalloproteinase (SVMP) toxin family, Variation in venom composition is a ubiquitous phenomenon in snakes and occurs both interspecifically and intraspecifically. Venom variation can have severe outcomes for snakebite victims by rendering the specific antibodies found in antivenoms ineffective against heterologous toxins found in different venoms. The rapid evolutionary expansion of different toxin-encoding gene families in different snake lineages is widely perceived as the main cause of venom variation. However, this view is simplistic and disregards the understudied influence that processes acting on gene transcription and translation may have on the production of the venom proteome. Here, we assess the venom composition of six related viperid snakes and compare interspecific changes in the number of toxin genes, their transcription in the venom gland, and their translation into proteins secreted in venom. Our results reveal that multiple levels of regulation are responsible for generating variation in venom composition between related snake species. We demonstrate that differential levels of toxin transcription, translation, and their posttranslational modification have a substantial impact upon the resulting venom protein mixture. Notably, these processes act to varying extents on different toxin paralogs found in different snakes and are therefore likely to be as important as ancestral gene duplication events for generating compositionally distinct venom proteomes. Our results suggest that these processes may also contribute to altering the toxicity of snake venoms, and we demonstrate how this variability can undermine the treatment of a neglected tropical disease, snakebite., Peer reviewed