"La Caixa" Foundation Fellowships. Apply and join the GEDA!

Incoming call for  INPhINIT Doctoral Fellowship ("LA CAIXA" Foundation) !! 

 

Are you interested in obtaining a Ph.D. on seabirds ecology ? The La Caixa Foundation grants 65 fellowships for talented early-stage researchers of any nationality to pursue their PhD studies in Spain or Portugal.  Apply at   https://fundacionlacaixa.org/en/inphinit-doctoral-fellowships-call and select our project. Find our project on seabirds (here) and join the GEDAi

Research Project / Research Group Description

Seabirds are in rapid decline worldwide, but the relative importance of the multiple threats to their populations is not always clear, nor the birds’ response to current global changes.  As top-predators their behavior, dynamics and life-history strategy reflect ocean state and condition and their decline is showing that the marine ecosystems is changing. 

Photo: Victor Paris

The research project aims to investigate the life-history strategy of seabirds under the current chemo-physical changes of the ocean. The project will take advantage of the long term monitoring databases collected by the team and the data collected by GPS and GLS devices to follow birds during their foraging movements and migratory routes. It will focus on two species of conservation interest, belonging to the order of Procellariformes, the European storm petrel Hydrobates pelagicus and the Scopoli’s shearwater Calonectris diomedea. Birds will be studied in the Balearic archipelago and Alicante region (Eastern Spain). The deployment of tracking devices will allow to investigate the individual and the species-specific movements in order to detect the important foraging and overwinter areas to help policy makers to reduce the threats to their populations.

 If you need more information on the project: g.tavecchia-at-uib.es

Apply here!!

New Publication on Sea Turtles range expansion!

Santidrián Tomillo, P., Tomás, J., Marcos, A., Panagopoulou,A. and Tavecchia,G. 2022 Enviornmental changes in the Mediterranean Sea could facilitate the western expansion of loggerhead turtles. MEPS DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/meps14149

ABSTRACT: Climate change may affect life on Earth in multiple ways. Whereas some populations may encounter detrimental conditions that cause extirpations, those occupying cooler thermal limits of a range may benefit by expanding. For sea turtles, egg maturation in the female oviduct and nest incubation are temperature-dependent and vulnerable to climate change. 

Mediterranean loggerhead turtles Caretta caretta nest in the eastern basin although sporadic nesting occurs on the western side. To assess the likelihood of a climate-related expansion, we compared historical air and sea surface (SST) temperatures between locations near established eastern nesting areas and western areas where sporadic nesting is increasing (Palinuro, Italy) or just started (Balearic Islands, Spain). Our results suggest that summer air and water temperatures in western sites were suitable for nesting over the last 40-50 yr, at least in July-August, having (1) SSTs above suboptimal threshold temperature (22°C) and (2) similar air temperatures to those of Greece, but among the lowest in the Mediterranean. There was a decreasing east-to-west gradient in SST. However, SSTs were similar around beaches of Zakynthos (Greece), Palinuro and Ibiza (Balearic Islands), where SST was above 22°C for at least 60 d, potentially allowing turtles to lay multiple clutches. A warming trend was detected in air temperature and SST since the 1970s-1980s. Although conditions in the western Mediterranean currently seem suitable for nesting, lower air temperatures in May-June and higher precipitation in September could shrink the nesting window. If warming continues, conditions in the western basin could progressively become more favorable for nesting. 

New Publication on Synchrony !

Payo-Payo, A., Igual,J.-M., Sanz-Aguilar, A., Real, E., Genovart, M., Oro, D., Tavecchia, G., 2022 Interspecific synchrony on breeding performance and the role of anthropogenic food subsidies. PLoS One, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0275569 

Abstract. Synchrony can have important consequences for long-term metapopulations persistence, community dynamics and ecosystems functioning. While the causes and consequences of intra-specific synchrony on population size and demographic rates have received considerable attention only a few factors that may affect inter-specific synchrony have been described. We formulate the hypothesis that food subsidies can buffer the influence of environmental stochasticity on community dynamics, disrupting and masking originally synchronized systems.

 To illustrate this hypothesis, we assessed the consequences of European policies implementation affecting subsidy availability on the temporal synchrony of egg volume as a proxy of breeding investment in two sympatric marine top predators with differential subsidy use. We show how 7-year synchrony appears on egg volume fluctuations after subsidy cessation suggesting that food subsidies could disrupt interspecific synchrony. Moreover, cross correlation increased after subsidy cessation and environmental buffering seems to act during synchronization period. We emphasize that subsidies dynamics and waste management provide novel insights on the emergence of synchrony in natural populations.

New Publication on Red kite and early life conditions!

Sergio, F., Tavecchia, G., Blas, J., Taferna, A., Hiraldo, F., Korpimaki, E., and Beissinger, S. R. 2022. Hardship at birth alters the impact of climate change on a long-lived predator. Nature Communication 13, 5517 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-33011-7

Summary:

Photo: es.wikipedia.org

Climate change is increasing the frequency of extreme events, such as droughts or hurricanes, with substantial impacts on human and wildlife communities. Extreme events can affect individuals through two pathways: by altering the fitness of adults encountering a current extreme, and by affecting the development of individuals born during a natal extreme, a largely overlooked process. Here, we show that the impact of natal drought on an avian predator overrode the effect of current drought for decades, so that individuals born during drought were disadvantaged throughout life. Incorporation of natal effects caused a 40% decline in forecasted population size and a 21% shortening of time to extinction. These results imply that climate change may erode populations more quickly and severely than currently appreciated, suggesting the urgency to incorporate “penalties” for natal legacies in the analytical toolkit of impact forecasts. Similar double impacts may apply to other drivers of global change.

 

New Publication on seabird egg volume !

Real, E., Oro, D., Bertolero, A., Igual, J.M., Sanz-Aguilar, A., Genovart, M., Hidalgo, M., Tavecchia,G. 2022. It’s not all abundance: Detectability and accessibility of food also explain breeding investment in long-lived marine animals. PLoS One

 Summary: Large-scale climatic indices are extensively used as predictors of ecological processes, but the mechanisms and the spatio-temporal scales at which climatic indices influence these processes are often speculative. Here, we use long-term data to evaluate how a measure of individual breeding investment (the egg volume) of three long-lived and long-distance-migrating seabirds is influenced by i) a large-scale climatic index (the North Atlantic Oscillation) and ii) local-scale variables (food abundance, foraging conditions, and competition). Winter values of the North Atlantic Oscillation did not correlate with local-scale variables measured in spring, but surprisingly, both had a high predictive power of the temporal variability of the egg volume in the three study species, even though they have different life-history strategies. 

The importance of the winter North Atlantic Oscillation suggests carry-over effects of winter conditions on subsequent breeding investment. Interestingly, the most important local-scale variables measured in spring were associated with food detectability (foraging conditions) and the factors influencing its accessibility (foraging conditions and competition by density-dependence). Large-scale climatic indices may work better as predictors of foraging conditions when organisms perform long distance migrations, while local-scale variables are more appropriate when foraging areas are more restricted (e.g. during the breeding season). Contrary to what is commonly assumed, food abundance does not directly translate into food intake and its detectability and accessibility should be considered in the study of food-related ecological processes.

New Publication on Open Access policy!

Santidrián Tomillo, P., Zandoná, E., Iñamagua, J. P., Payo-Payo, A., 2022. Open Access perpetuates differences between higher- and lower-income countries    Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.2538

On Write Back section of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, authors express their interesting point of view on Open Access journal.  Worth reading!

Lilford's wall lizard: genome assembly completed!

The CNAG laboratory in collaboration with the University of Barcelona and the GEDA (IMEDEA-CSIC/UIB) has completed the assembly of the Lilford's wall lizard genome (tweet here). This new acheivement opens the door for deeper insight on the evolution and life-hisotry tactics of this fantastic endemic species.

GEDA-i at Cape Town!

Dr. A. Rotger was invited by the Centre for Statistics in Ecology, Environment and Conservation (SEEC) of Cape Town University to attend the International Statistical Ecology Conference conference in South Africa. It was a good occasion to illustrate his work on applied demography and introduce the research lines of the GEDA-i.