Ponente: Kevin P. Johnson Título: The Tree of Lice: The History of Host-Parasite Coevolution Resumen: Parasites are model systems for linking microevolutionary processes with macroevolutionary patterns. Avian feather lice spend their entire lifecycle on the body of their host and are highly host specific. Variation in host specificity across different groups of dove feather lice is related to differences in dispersal ability, which translates into differences in how much the evolutionary tree of lice matches that of their hosts. Across feather lice more broadly, genera differ in how they escape host preening defenses, having repeatedly evolved into head, wing, and body lice, often diverging within a single host group. New phylogenomic techniques using an automated Target Restricted Assembly (aTRAM) method can assemble thousands of genes from genome sequences of lice, which have relatively small genomes. Phylogenies based on these genes are highly supported and provide new insights into the higher level relationships of lice.

Ponente: Carlos Gutiérrez-Expósito (Departamento de Biología de la Conservación) Título: Biology and Conservation of the Andalusian Buttonquail (Turnix sylvaticus sylvaticus, Resumen: The buttonquail family (Turnicidae) is one of the least studied bird groups of the world. Among them, the nominate subspecies of the Small Buttonquail (Turnix sylvaticus), widely known as Andalusian Buttonquail, formerly occurred along the western Mediterranean countries in both European (Italy, Spain & Portugal) and African (from Libya to Morocco) shores. Starting from a global review of the knowledge status of the whole family, we will focus on the recent history and status of this critically endangered taxon. Based on museum specimen data and historic literature we will reconstruct the former distribution area and then study the long-term changes in land use and the environmental drivers that can explain the large decline of the species along the XX century. Then an assessment of the demography status and habitat selection of the last remnant population that still exist in Morocco will be done as well as a description on the breeding biology and the natural history if this population.

Ponente: Sara Castro (Dept Etología y Conservación de la Biodiversidad) Título: ¿Determinan las comunidades nativas el éxito e impacto de las invasiones biológicas? Resumen: El estudio de las es de vital importancia ya que representan uno de los procesos más importantes de cambio global y pérdida de biodiversidad. Son dos los factores determinan la invasión de una nueva área: las características de la especie que invade, que determinan su potencial para invadir; y las características del ecosistema nativo, que determinan su susceptibilidad a ser invadido (“invasibilidad") y su vulnerabilidad a los impactos potenciales. Mi tesis se centra en este segundo factor, evaluando el efecto de las comunidades nativas en el éxito e impacto a una invasora mundial, la hormiga argentina (Linepithema humile), y la importancia relativa de uno de los principales mecanismos que modulan estos efectos: la resistencia biótica.

Genetically-based variation in the functional traits of keystone species can influence the composition of the community within which those species are embedded. Similarly, local adaptation to biotic and abiotic environmental variation can drive population-level variation in such traits. We test the hypothesis that local adaptation of a keystone plant can lead to variation among populations in the community of associated arthropods. Studying a strong environmental cline along the California coast, we test for local adaptation in the perennial shrub Artemisia californica and its consequences for the more than 200 species of associated arthropods.

DENIS BOURGUET /Centre de Biologie pour la Gestion des Populations (CBGP), Montpellier/. PEER COMMUNITY IN: A FREE PUBLIC SYSTEM FOR PEER-REVIEWING AND HIGHLIGHTING PREPRINTS. In order to offer an alternative to the current system of publication -which is particularly expensive and not very transparent - we have initiated the Peer Community in (PCI, https://peercommunityin.org) project. PCI is a non-profit scientific organization that aims to create specific communities of researchers reviewing and recommending,for free, unpublished preprints in their field (i.e. unpublished articles deposited on open online archives like arXiv.org and bioRxiv.org). Each PCI is a group of several hundreds recommenders playing the role of editors who recommend such preprints based on peer-reviews to make them complete, reliable and citable articles, without the need for publication in 'traditional' journals (altough the authors can submit their recommended preprints afterwards). Evaluations and recommendations by PCI Evol Biol are free of charge. When a recommender decides to recommend a preprint, he/she writes a recommendation text that is published along with all the editorial correspondence (reviews, recommender's decisions, authors' replies) by PCI Evol Biol. The preprint itself is not published by PCI Evol Biol; it remains in the preprint server where it has been posted by the authors. The first Peer Community in has been launched in 2017: Peer Community in Evolutionary Biology (PCI Evol Biol). More than 350 recommenders have already joined PCI Evol Biol. PCI Paleontology and PCI Ecology have been launched in January 2018 and this latter PCI already counts 250 recommenders.

Título: Understanding the mechanisms underlying effective crop pollination services Resumen: Worldwide, insect pollinators significantly contribute to biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services within agricultural systems. While it is clear that the yield and quality of global food crops benefit to varying degrees from animal pollination, we still know little about the specific mechanisms by which different pollinators impact production. In this presentation, I will discuss some of the current work we are doing in this field, new developments in methods and how these can help us better understand the interactions between crops and crop pollinators.

"Temporal Changes of fruit-bird networks due to phenology: innovations of a multilayer approach". A frequently-used approach to explore seed dispersal is through complex network analysis, in which species are represented as nodes and interactions as edges. However, most seed-dispersal networks are analysed as connections with a single type of static edge, excluding any explicit consideration of their temporal change. This limits our understanding of temporal dynamics of seed dispersal in real ecosystems, given that the abundance of both frugivores and fruit crops varies over time. For birds and plants being able to interact, they need to have a matching phenology. In fact, phenological uncoupling is one of the most frequent reasons of the presence of forbidden links in ecological networks, i.e. links that remain unrecorded because of biological constraints (and not because of limited sampling effort). The emergent field of multilayer networks incorporates multiple layers of ecological complexity and allows a proper analysis of highly dynamic temporal systems, with differentiated intra-layer (a time span) and inter-layer connectivity (species persistence across time spans). In this talk, we present the theoretical background and main objectives of my recently started TEMPNET project, in which fruit phenology is linked to the temporal dynamics of seed-dispersal networks. We aim at 1)assessing how seasonal and long-term phenological shifts in the abundance of frugivore and plant resources will alter seed-dispersal networks; 2) determining the prevalence of phenological uncoupling and evaluating its ultimate consequences for biodiversity conservation. We will use as study system a Mediterranean scrubland community from SW Spain (Doñana National Park). This new conceptual approach allows exploring the evolutionary consequences of phenological mismatches among fruits and bird consumers, with higher probability of occurrence in a context of global change.

Ciclos en el estudio de la biodiversidad: El samsara del herpetólogo Santiago Castroviejo-Fisher Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Porto Alegre, Brasil Estudiar la diversidad de la vida es un desafío intelectual de primer orden, cuyos resultados tienen importantes implicaciones para la humanidad. Sin embargo, a día de hoy, incluso las unidades comparativas básicas en el estudio de la biodiversidad están poco o nada estudiadas. En este seminario, se expondrán los esfuerzos de un grupo de biólogos en el estudio de la biodiversidad animal. Usando radiaciones evolutivas de anfibios, como por ejemplo las ranas de cristal, en la región mas biodiversa del planeta—la cuenca amazónica—el Dr. Castroviejo-Fisher explicará desde como se organizan expediciones científicas a algunas de las regiones mas remotas del planeta para la colecta de datos, hasta como se testan explicaciones causales sobre el origen y distribución de la diversidad observada.

Historical ecology from written sources: a long-term view of distribution changes and biological invasions Abstract: Past processes and events may have an important influence on contemporaneous ecological patterns, including current human impacts on landscapes and organisms. In spite of that, most of the ecological knowledge has been built upon short-term studies, which very rarely exceed one decade. Ecology and Conservation Biology have an important lack of historical approaches, a deficiency that may become a hindrance for the management of natural systems. In this talk I will present examples of how historical information on the distribution of organisms can be used to address ecological questions. Analyses are mainly based on two important Spanish historical written sources from the 16th century and the 19ht century, but also use archival information. I address questions related to the history of biological invasions, habitat loss and the impacts of global warming focusing on animal populations in freshwater systems. The outputs of ecological research based on historical data become useful tools for present-day biodiversity conservation planning and actions --

Findings from a long-term study of sparrowhawks

"Application of high-sensitive and high-throughput molecular tools to disentangle the mechanisms of heavy metal accumulation and tolerance in mosses: epigenetic and transcriptomic approaches (BRYOMICS)" M. Teresa Boquete Seoane Marie S. Curie Research Fellow. Ecology and Evolution of Plant-Animal Interactions, EBD-CSIC. http://www.bryomics.com/ @Tere_BS, @bryomics Bryophytes are the second most diverse group of terrestrial plants and can colonize almost any ecosystem on Earth (peatlands, tundra, alpine areas, drylands, tropics, geothermal areas, etc.). They possess very low levels of morphological and anatomical complexity and limited capacity of self-internal regulation (poikilohydry), and yet they are extremely tolerant to abiotic stress, such as heavy metal toxicity. Exposure to heavy metals imposes a strong selective pressure to plants, nonetheless, bryophytes are able to thrive and some species even specialize to live in highly contaminated environments. Nowadays, there is still limited information about the ecological and evolutionary significance of heavy metal accumulation and tolerance in bryophytes as well as on the molecular pathways underlying these traits. In this seminar I will present BRY’O’MICS, a project funded by the European Commission designed to provide a deeper understanding of the mechanisms underlying the existence of phenotypic variability for heavy metal tolerance and hyperaccumulation in bryophytes.

Seed-Dispersal interactions in a fragmented biodiversity hotspot: a metanetwork approach. Bird seed-dispersal (BSD) interactions can function as mobile links to connect fragmented forests by scaling-up from within-fragment networks to a spatial metanetwork linked by shared interactions. We explored the structure of a metanetwork of BSD-interactions from 16 fragments of a biodiversity hotspot, the Atlantic Forest, to test whether a distinct subset of BSD-interactions may mediate connectivity among forest fragments. We found high beta-diversity and turnover of interactions among fragments, forming an interaction-rich, modular and poorly connected metanetwork. Larger, less-disturbed tracts harboured distinct interactions vanishing in smaller-area fragments (10,000 ha) which, in turn, harboured new combinations of interacting species, generating geographic variation across large spatial scales. Potential mobile links constituted a distinct subset of interactions, involving generalist small-bodied bird species and small-seeded, fast-growing plant species. We unveiled specific BSD-interactions as the metanetwork components potentially connecting forest fragments and persisting facing defaunation and fragmentation, possibly leading to long-term changes of forest structure.

Plant community assembly in invaded Mediterranean ecosystems Some non-native plants can establish self-sustaining populations and become naturalised in new regions, causing strong impacts by affecting the native flora and fauna, and also the ecosystem services on which people rely. Most biogeographic studies to disentangle the causes of success have compared non-native species populations in the native and in the introduced range, while there have been few approaches at the community level. This thesis will focus on community assemblage of native and non-native plant species on Mediterranean ecosystems. The analysis will be performed at different levels of ecological resolution and will be based on the analysis of large plant datasets, previous empirical data on functional traits, field surveys, and experimental tests. The methodological approach will use tools of functional ecology. Plant functional traits are heritable features, easily measurable at the individual level, and associated to fundamental axes of functional differentiation. The analysis of traits permits the establishment of hierarchies among species which are conserved across environments, therefore allowing for comparisons. My thesis, by scanning plant traits between coexisting native and non-native species across transcontinental areas, will improve our understanding on the biogeography of plant invasions in Mediterranean regions.

"Plant-ungulate dynamics in Mediterranean areas with high inter-annual variation in plant productivity". Ungulates are keystone elements of many terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, as they often regulate vegetation composition and cover, and play crucial roles in other ecological processes (e.g. soil fertilization). In recent decades, strong increases in the abundance and activity of wild ungulates have been reported across temperate and boreal ecosystems. The ecological, economic and social impacts of this changes are potentially strong, and they are receiving increasing attention among researchers, practitioners and policy makers. To understand the reasons behind the current changes in ungulate abundance across different regions of the planet, we must deepen our knowledge of the factors that govern their population dynamics. A key element in forecasting their causes and impacts is the concurrent changes in food availability – i.e. the interplaying influences ofplant production and herbivore consumption, and the role of the spatial and movement ecology of the ungulates in regulating such interaction. My PhD thesis focuses on the population dynamics and spatial ecology of the wild and domestic ungulates of the Doñana National Park. The objective is to provide knowledge and criteria for the sustainable management of ungulates in environments with high variability in rainfall and plant productivity. For this purpose, I propose a multidisciplinary approach involving the use of several techniques, including population analysis (historical data on ungulate population counts), demographic models, movement and space use analysis (based on data from GPS-tracked individuals) and spatial models (plant productivity and phenology, based on EO data).

Patterns and processes underlying host-parasite population structures

Las aves como bioindicadores de la salud ambiental del estuario del Guadalquivir y zonas aledañas sometidas a perturbación antrópica En las últimas décadas, el incremento de las actividades humanas ha motivado la liberación incontrolada de muchos contaminantes a los ecosistemas terrestres y acuáticos. Consecuentemente, multitud de iniciativas de biomonitoring usando especies de aves (principalmente rapaces, aves acuáticas y aves marinas) como centinelas han sido establecidas para determinar el grado de impacto de estas potenciales perturbaciones. En este sentido, varios tipos de muestras biológicas han sido consideradas (huevos, plumas, heces, sangre, tejidos internos, etc.). Sin embargo, no todas han permitido advertir con exactitud la exposición a contaminantes. Generalmente, los programas de biomonitoring con aves basados en el análisis de exposición a contaminantes evalúan alteraciones en los parámetros fisiológicos y comportamentales de las especies. No obstante, en las dos últimas décadas, las relaciones entre las fuentes de carbono (?13C) y nitrógeno (?15N), el nivel trófico y la exposición a contaminantes también han sido consideradas. Además, la mayoría de estudios sobre exposición a contaminantes en aves han sido propuestos a corto plazo, usando para ello tejidos de individuos vivos. Sin embargo, la fuente histórica de información que ofrecen las colecciones de museo ha sido casi obviada. En esta tesis doctoral se pretende evaluar la calidad ambiental de las áreas terrestres aledañas al tramo bajo del río Guadalquivir, mediante el estudio (a corto plazo) de la exposición a elementos traza en pollos 3 especies centinela: cernícalo vulgar (Falco tinnunculus), lechuza común (Tyto alba) y cigüeña blanca (Ciconia ciconia). Además, se estudiarán las tendencias temporales (análisis retrospectivo) en la exposición a un amplio rango de elementos esenciales y no esenciales a partir de especímenes de museo. En todos los casos, se considerará además un estudio isotópico (?13C/ ?15N) para investigar si los patrones espaciales o temporales de exposición a cada elemento pueden ser explicados por cambios en la ecología trófica de las poblaciones. Igualmente, se valorará qué tipo de matriz biológica (sangre vs pluma) refleja con mayor certeza la exposición a 29 elementos inorgánicos.

Impacto de la agricultura y la ganadería sobre la biodiversidad: Influencia en la dinámica de transmisión de patógenos y en el estado de salud de las aves El aumento de la transformación del uso del suelo mediante procesos de urbanización y actividades agropecuarias producen altos impactos ecológicos a nivel global. Esto genera una pérdida global de biodiversidad y modifica el funcionamiento de los ecosistemas potencialmente afectando el estado de salud de las poblaciones animales. Los ciclos de transmisión de enfermedades transmitidas por insectos vectores, entre otros, se han visto alterados como consecuencia de la perturbación de la abundancia y diversidad de los insectos vectores y los hospedadores vertebrados. El objetivo de esta tesis es valorar cómo la alteración antrópica del medio y la pérdida de biodiversidad afecta las dinámicas de transmisión de patógenos y sus efectos en los hospedadores.

"Evolution of complex floral trait mediated by generalized pollination networks" Generalist plants interact with constellations of pollinators varying in their frequency of interaction and fitness impact. These heterogeneous groups of organisms are themselves networks that define the pollination niches of plants. The composition, topology and architecture of these pollination networks vary spatially, temporally and across organization levels: within individuals phenologically, among individuals of the same population, among nearby populations, among geographical regions, among related species and macroevolutionarily among phylogenetically-distant species. How generalist plants evolve in response to pollinators in this fractal context is yet an unsolved question. Here, using as model system plant species of the Brassicaceae family, I explore the role played by pollinator networks in the micro- and macroevolution of generalist plants. At microevolutionary level, several attributes of individual-based pollination networks favor the occurrence of significant selection on plant phenotype and promote the maintenance of a fine-scale genetic structure. But not only organisms may be agent of selection. The whole individual network itself can constitute as selective pressures, with some network metrics becoming part of the extended interactive phenotype of generalist plants. Because the inherent spatial variability of individual networks, selection geographic mosaics and landscape-scale local adaptations easily emerge in generalist systems. Scaling up, spatial variation in the attributes of pollinator networks may trigger pollinator-mediated ecological speciation or, on the contrary, foster the occurrence of hybrid zones. At the macroevolutionary level, the lability of clade-oriented networks may cause the occurrence of pollinator-mediated phenotypic diversification. All this evidence suggests that the patterns of plant evolution in generalist scenarios are more complex than previously thought. Their study from a network perspective provides us with a richer and sounder picture of the role that multispecific assemblages of pollinators play in the phenotypic evolution of generalist plants.

"An integrative approach to phylogeograhy: investigating the evolutionary history of two co-distributed amphibians at different geographic and temporal scales”

"Seasonal wetlands across the Atlantic" Seasonal wetlands are selective, “isolated” habitats of interest to ecology, evolutionary biology, and conservation. Seasonal wetlands in warmer climates (e.g., subtropical, Mediterranean) have been especially vulnerable to alteration and removal by people, and likely vulnerable to changing hydrology with climate change. Recent large-scale evaluations of seasonal wetlands have focused within a continent. Here I attempt to compare and contrast seasonal wetlands across continents, starting with wetlands in the upper Everglades of the Florida peninsula (USA) and in Doñana (Spain). The two regions differ in geology, climate, and research histories, but share other important conditions (seasonal precipitation, flat terrain, agricultural land use, and numerous seasonal wetlands. Perhaps this comparison can lead to future collaborations and even expansion to include other regions.