Open Call for Research Projects in ICTS-Doñana!

The Singular Scientific and Technical Infrastructure Doñana Biological Reserve (ICTS-Doñana) announces the opening of a call for international research projects in the Doñana Natural Space.

Selected projects will receive a grant of up to €10,000 per application, intended to cover expenses such as travel and per diems for researchers, consumables, and small research project materials.

Priority will be given to international projects that collaborate with Spanish research teams in Doñana Natural Space, that make use of the facilities of the ICTS and/or use environmental monitoring data provided by ICTS-Doñana.

The call for proposals will remain open until 30 June 2024, with priority given to projects led by young researchers and women.

Send your research project in Spanish or English with the CV of the Principal Researcher to direccion.ebd@csic.es

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Funding: Junta Andalucía Call QUAL21-020



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Understanding the processes leading to fossilization

Understanding the processes leading to fossilization

Modern death assemblages provide insights about the early stages of fossilization and useful ecological information about the species inhabiting the ecosystem. The results of taphonomic monitoring of modern vertebrate carcasses and bones from Doñana National Park, a Mediterranean coastal ecosystem in Andalusia, Spain, are presented. Ten different habitats were surveyed. Half of them occur in active depositional environments (marshland, lake margin, river margin, beach and dunes). Most of the skeletal remains belong to land mammals larger than 5 kg in body weight (mainly wild and feral ungulates). Overall, the Doñana bone assemblage shows good preservation with little damage to the bones, partly as a consequence of the low predator pressure on large vertebrates. Assemblages from active depositional habitats differ significantly from other habitats in terms of the higher incidence of breakage and chewing marks on bones in the latter, which result from scavenging, mainly by wild boar and red fox. The lake-margin and river-margin death assemblages have high concentrations of well preserved bones that are undergoing burial and offer the greatest potential to produce fossil assemblages. The spatial distribution of species in the Doñana death assemblage generally reflects the preferred habitats of the species in life. Meadows seem to be a preferred winter habitat for male deer, given the high number of shed antlers recorded there. This study is further proof that taphonomy can provide powerful insights to better understand the ecology of modern species and to infer past and future scenarios for the fossil record. informacion[at]ebd.csic.es: Domingo et al (2020) Taphonomic information from the modern vertebrate death assemblage of Doñana National Park, Spain. PLOS ONE 15(11): e0242082. DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0242082


https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0242082