Resultados de investigación

ZEE-2019 Cruise (29HE20190523) carried out on the Research Vessel Hespérides in 2019, Study of the Spanish Economic Zone in the Canary Islands

POSEIDON Cruise (29SG20190227) carried out on the Research Vessel Sarmiento de Gamboa in 2019, POSEIDON "Persistence of Organic Substrates Explained In Diluted Oceanic eNvironments". Dissolved Organic Matter (DOM) is the second largest reservoir of organic carbon in the biosphere equivalent to all the living organisms or over 200 times all living marine organisms. Most of the oceanic DOM is stored in deep waters under 1,000 m locked away from the atmosphere. This makes the DOM pool so important for the regulation of the Earth’s climate that variations in the amount of DOM stored in the deep ocean have been linked to climate change in past geological times. This large amount of carbon seems to be unavailable to microbial decomposers, a fact that has puzzled scientists for decades. The classic explanation has been that DOM is composed of highly recalcitrant substances which cannot be degraded by microbes. However, despite decades of research, there is virtually no indication specific compounds accumulating in the DOM pool. Instead, the DOM seems to be composed of thousands to hundreds of thousands of different molecules, each of them in very low concentrations. Our team tested recently the alternative hypothesis that the compounds that make the bulk of the DOM pool in the deep ocean are not intrinsically recalcitrant but their utilization is simply limited by the extremely low concentrations of each individual molecule. This change of paradigm opens a new avenue for research and leads to new hypotheses that may help better understand the mechanisms behind one of the largest reservoirs of organic carbon in the biosphere. The aim of project POSEIDON is to address some of those new hypotheses though a combination of in situ measurements and experimental manipulations of naturally occurring DOM

EXPLOSEA-2 Cruise (29SG20190611) carried out on the Research Vessel Sarmiento de Gamboa in 2019, The objective of the EXPLOSEA 2 survey is to investigate hydrothermal underwater emissions in marine bottoms of the South Shetland Islands (Antarctica). These emissions are related to themagmatic / volcanic activity of the Bransfield retro-arch basin (Bransfield Strait, Island of Deception and Byers Peninsula) and the subduction zone north of the South Shetland Islands

ALSSOMAR Cruise (29SG20190830) carried out on the Research Vessel Sarmiento de Gamboa in 2019, Alboran Shelf-Slope cOupling processes and deep sediMent trAnsfeR: Source to sink approaches and implications for biodiversity (ALSSOMAR S2S) This research project intends to conduct a study of the continental margin and the adjacent slope, paying special attention to the storage capacity of sediments and their movement from the platform to the slope

INSIGHT_LEG2 Cruise (29SG20190930) carried out on the Research Vessel Sarmiento de Gamboa in 2019, “ImagiNg large SeismogenIc and tsunamiGenic structures of the Gulf of Cadiz with ultra-High resolution Technologies” (INSIGHT). The 2nd Leg of the INSIGHT cruise was aimed at imaging and characterizing, with the highest possible resolution, selected active seismogenic faults, large slope failures and investigate their relation with fluid seepage in the Gulf of Cadiz

RESNEP-2 Cruise (29SG20191107) carried out on the Research Vessel Sarmiento de Gamboa in 2019, The main goal of the RESNEP scientific project is to study the use of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) as a tool for the recovery of the marine popultion of species of fishery interest. The target species is the Norway lobster (Nephrops norvegicus) , an iconic fishery along the Spanish Mediterranean coast but at present with populations in overexploited status. The main oceanographic operations are ROV dive and the use of traps for the biomass evaluation of the Nephrops norvegicus. The studied MPA (or no-take fishery zone) was established in September of 2017 so this oceanographic cruise is doing its research 2 years after the regular fishery activity was banned. RESNEP: (1) quantify abundance, Survival and dispersion of Nephrops norvegicus by capturing / recapturing captured crayfish and marked with individual coding; (2) determine whether Nephrops norvegicus are considered inside or outside the reserve zone: (3) quantify different parameters related to population status (biomass, abundance, individual size) within the reserve and in the control area by taking of different biological measures, (4) taking biological samples of all species that can be considered as potential predators of the Nephrops norvegicus and (5) characterize the state of the bottom of the areas where trawling has been regulated

MERS Cruise (29SG20191124) carried out on the Research Vessel Sarmiento de Gamboa in 2019, The cruise is part of a set of studies that are being carried out from the ICERS-UAB MERS research group in contribution to the project BLUEISLANDS financed within the framework of the European European INTERREG program Mediterranean. These studies aim to: [1] quantify the inflows of microplastics to the Mediterranean Sea, from the coastal areas of the Mediterranean, subject to different degrees of anthropic pressure; and [2] analyze how once at sea, these pollutants are distributed and potentially accumulated in different environmental matrices. In this context, the main purpose of the cruise is the collection of samples of different environmental matrices covering a transect with a population gradient marking: from the great urban center of the city of Barcelona, ​​to the natural site of the Ebro Delta. The samples are intended to characterize the flows of entry of microplastics and deposition of microplastics of the Catalan coast. For it, the characterization and distribution of contamination by microplastics in surface water (neuston nets), in the water column (CTD + rosette and multinet), the deposition and intake of microplastics by benthic macroinvertebrates (van Veen dredge / boxcorer) and potential accumulation in sediments (- multicorer - boxcorer). Additionally, as a contribution to our publication "River Deltas as hotspots of microplastic accumulation: the case study of the Ebro River (NW Mediterranean) ", is intended to sample the mouth of the Ebro Delta, to try to reconstruct the contribution of the Ebro river as an entry of microplastics into the sea Mediterranean, and provide more evidence of the importance of deltas as areas of accumulation for these contaminants

These are the datasets containing wild boar records downloaded from Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) used to fit presence-only and presence-background models. It indicates the data key, publishing organization key, licenses and references., Peer reviewed

We present a new comprehensive index for mapping the relative conservation value of threatened biodiversity. The index is based on explicit criteria to (1) select threatened species according to regional government responsibility for species’ conservation; (2) combine species’ presence by means of weighting factors based on differences in threat status, sensitivity to disturbance, functional role, and amount of knowledge; and (3) map species distributions at the scale of 1 km×1 km UTM squares or lower from the information available. We tested the performance of the index in the forest of Andalusia (southern Spain), an extensive European region of 87,268 km2, with 43,864 km2 (ca. 50%) classified as forest habitats. All species included in the Annexes of the European Birds and Habitats Directives inhabiting the target area, plus the regionally endemic species either ‘Critically Endangered’ or ‘Endangered’ not (yet) covered by the Directives were selected. The final list included 224 species: 81 plants, 76 birds, 31 mammals, 22 arthropods, six reptiles, five amphibians, and three mollusks. Fine-scale distribution maps were available for 108 species (48%). The remaining maps were downscaled from published 10 km×10 km UTM maps using knowledge on species’ habitat requirements and land-use maps. We overlapped the fine-scale maps with the 86,546 forest tiles of the Andalusian Forest Map and weighted presences by a factor of relative conservation estimated for each species to obtain an index of the relative conservation of each forest tile. Index values were higher in protected areas, and in different forest habitats according to expected numbers of endangered species. Index values were correlated with the existence value of threatened species, but the index underestimate existence values especially for the most valuable tiles. The proposed index allows mapping the relative conservation value of threatened biodiversity by integrating knowledge on all threatened species into a single variable. Integration is based on explicit methodological criteria for species selection, combination of relative conservation values, and estimation of downscaled maps. Accurate mapping and synthetic summary of compulsory data on the conservation status of all species present in a territory advise its extended use for threatened biodiversity valuation in both Europe and elsewhere., Junta de Andalucía, Award: RECAMAN (contract n° NET165602). Spanish National Plan of R&D, Award: VEABA (ECO2013-42110-P). Spanish National Plan of R&D, Award: TrEnGood (ECO2017-84461-R)., Peer reviewed

The feeding activity of copepods is crucial for the structure and functioning of marine ecosystems. Quantification of feeding rates of different copepod life stages across a range of prey densities (functional response) is essential knowledge for improvement of plankton dynamic models. In this study, we conducted experiments to compare the feeding functional responses of nauplii, copepodites, and adults of the marine copepod Paracartia grani (formerly Acartia grani) when grazing on the flagellate Rhodomonas salina. We found that all copepod stages followed a sigmoid curve in their functional responses (Holling Type III model), indicating a metabolic threshold constraining foraging effort at low prey densities. Maximum clearance rates of nauplii and copepodites increased with body mass with a power scaling factor of 1, but maximum clearance rates of adults did not follow the pattern observed for juvenile stages, likely because of the relatively small prey size used in the experiments. Copepod maximum ingestion rates, however, showed allometric scaling along ontogeny that was closer to the typical 0.75 power law and seemed to not be so dependent on prey size. The insights obtained from our study highlight stage-specific differences in copepod feeding activity, and can help improve our capability to estimate the energy flow through copepods in marine food webs, This study was framed within the project FERMI (CGL2014-59227-R, MINECO/AEI/FEDER, UE). Manuel Olivares was supported financially by an FPU grant (FPU15/01747) from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, Number of experiment, date of experiment, temperature, bottle volume, prey species, prey species AphiaID, copepod species, copepod species AphiaID, copepod stage, prey concentration, prey size, number of copepods per bottle, copepod size, incubation time, clearance rate, ingestion rate, Peer reviewed