Second field campaign of the PARIS project in Mallorca

During the first half of July, we completed the second field campaign of project PARIS, a collaborative undertaking of the teams led by Elena Gómez Díaz at IBE-CSIC, Jordi Figuerola at EBD-CSIC and Luis Santamaría at IMEDEA-CSIC (this lab) to study the endoparasites of the two species of Balearic wall lizards (Podarcis lilfordi and P. pityusensis).

This campaign focused on resampling two populations of Lilford's wall lizard, at Sa Dragonera y Cabrera, and one invasive population of Ibiza wall lizard, at Illetes (Mallorca).

The campaign's team included Raquel Vasconcelos (IBE), Asier R. Larrinaga (LSE-IMEDEA) and several students of Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Balearic Islands (UIB): Valero Andreu, Alina Chalenko, Miriam Viader and Nahuel Manzanaro. Despite the high temperatures (we sampled during a severe heatwave) and the intensive work, the beauty of the field sites and the good humour of the team made the campaign a memorable experience.

Spanish R&D in Science Policy Forum

The article Dark Clouds over Spanish Science, which addresses the Spanish R&D policy, came out today in Science Policy Forum. It is a small contribution to improve the analysis of the productivity and quality of Spain's research and innovation systems.
A number of media are commenting on the paper, such as:
- Contra la ciencia orientada al sector privado, at El País
- 'Science' ve 'nubarrones' sobre la ciencia española, at El Mundo
 - La revista ‘Science’ critica el giro de España hacia la investigación “de mercado”, at Es Materia

- Science se hace eco de las "nubes negras" sobre la ciencia española, at ABC.

There are more details on the implications in these two interviews (both in Spanish):

- La Tertulia de Luis Herrero, esRadio, minutes18:22 to 27:13

- Balears fa Ciència, IB3, minutes 09:25 to 20:02

You can find more details on the devastating budget cuts suffered by Spain's R&D during the last years in this post of the blog ""Critical Science" (in Spanish).

Ants that ambush pollinators on flowers in JoE's blog

One of the great things of doing science in the possibility to collaborate with really cool researchers and learn together to appreciate the amazing intricancies of the living world.

A recent paper lead by Miguel A. Rodríguez Gironés and other researchers from the EEZA-CSIC in Almería explored the effectof weaver ants, which ambush insects on flowers, on plant-pollinator interactions. The paper is now available in early view and an summary illustrated  with cool pics has been published in Journal of Ecology blog.

As a small taster, find here a pic of weaver ants capturing a bee on Turnera flowers, at Sri Lanka.

Workshop on Adaptive Management of Kelp Forests

Last week, the Laboratory of Spatial Ecology organized, together with CIIMAR, a Workshop on the Adaptive Managament of Kelp Forests, in Porto (Portugal).

Pablo F. Méndez and L. Santamaría facilitated the workshop, which was part of the Marine Biodiversity case study of the BiodiversityKnowledge Project - a project aimed at facilitating the flow of knowledge between biodiversity experts and users in Europe.

During the workshop, the participants used techniques of group model building to develop recommendations for the managment of European kelp forests.

Keep an eye on this blog for the policy brief and other products generated in the workshop.

Ducks matter, even many miles away

Two new publications are now out.

They are part of the PhD thesis of Duarte Viana, based at Doñana Biological Station and focused on the long-distance dispersal of aquatic organisms by waterfowl - in which we are lucky to collaborate.

This one is already published and was selected for F1000Prime:



Viana, D.S., Santamaria, L., Michot, T.C., Figuerola, J. (2013) Migratory strategies of waterbirds shape thecontinental-scale dispersal of aquatic organisms. Ecography 36: 430-438.

And this one is available on early view:

Viana, D.S., Santamaria, L., Michot, T.C., Figuerola, J. (2013) Allometric scaling of long-distance seed dispersal by migratory birds. The American Naturalist 181: 649-662.


Congratulations to Duarte for two really cool pieces of work.

Image by Steve Garvie from Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland (EurasianTeal in flight) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Field campaign in Morocco

Last April 21-26th, we completed the second sampling campaign of project Quemomar, born from the interdisciplinary cooperation of three different departments of IMEDEA (Global Change Research, Marine Resources & Ecology and Biodiversity & Conservation).

The project, funded by the Spanish Cooperation Agency, analyzes the influence of the Mouluya River on the bio-geo-chemistry of its coastal zone.

The sampling, by a team of two Moroccan and four Spanish researchers, involved outings into the sea in two small boats and an extensive sampling along the river course.

It was an amazing experience, both natural and socially...