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

Download Application model

Funding: Junta Andalucía Call QUAL21-020



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Human impact has contributed to the decline of the Eurasion lynx

Human impact has contributed to the decline of the Eurasion lynx

Disentangling the contribution of long?term evolutionary processes and recent anthropogenic impacts to current genetic patterns of wildlife species is key to assessing genetic risks and designing conservation strategies. Eighty whole nuclear genomes and 96 mitogenomes from populations of the Eurasian lynx covering a range of conservation statuses, climatic zones and subspecies across Eurasia were used to infer the demographic history, reconstruct genetic patterns, and discuss the influence of long?term isolation and more recent human?driven changes. Results show that Eurasian lynx populations shared a common history until 100,000 years ago, when Asian and European populations started to diverge and both entered a period of continuous and widespread decline, with western populations, except Kirov (Russia), maintaining lower effective sizes than eastern populations. Population declines and increased isolation in more recent times probably drove the genetic differentiation between geographically and ecologically close westernmost European populations. By contrast, and despite the wide range of habitats covered, populations are quite homogeneous genetically across the Asian range, showing a pattern of isolation by distance and providing little genetic support for the several proposed subspecies. Mitogenomic and nuclear divergences and population declines starting during the Late Pleistocene can be mostly attributed to climatic fluctuations and early human influence, but the widespread and sustained decline since the Holocene is more probably the consequence of anthropogenic impacts which intensified in recent centuries, especially in western Europe. Genetic erosion in isolated European populations and lack of evidence for long?term isolation argue for the restoration of lost population connectivity between European and Asian poulations. informacion[at]ebd.csic.es: Lucena-Perez et al (2020). Genomic patterns in the widespread Eurasian lynx shaped by Late Quaternary climatic fluctuations and anthropogenic impacts. MOL ECOL 29(4) DOI 10.1111/mec.15366


https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/mec.15366