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28
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Introduction
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February 2018 - May 2022
Publications
Publications (28)
Ungulates consume plants and seeds together with the insects that feed on them, which have consequences at the ecosystem level. We carried out an experiment to assess the effects of intraguild predation by livestock on the main acorn pest (Curculio spp. weevils) in Iberian oak Quercus spp. dehesas, a widespread traditional agroecosystem. Acorns are...
Livestock grazing and trampling have been shown to reduce arthropod populations. Among arthropods, defoliating lepidopterans are particularly important for their impact on trees, the keystone structures of agroforestry systems. This study investigates the impact of livestock on the community of defoliating lepidopterans in agroforestry systems. We...
Forecasting the effects of global change drivers on ecosystems is one of the most pressing challenges for scientists worldwide. Particularly, climate change and exotic pathogens might have a large impact on plant community dynamics and ecosystem functioning through changes in carbon uptake and sinks. Nevertheless, we still have a poor understanding...
Increasing food production while avoiding negative impacts on biodiversity constitutes one of the main challenges of our time. Traditional silvopastoral systems like Iberian oak savannas ("dehesas") set an example, where free-range livestock has been reared for centuries while preserving a high natural value. Nevertheless, factors decreasing produc...
Premise
During the last centuries, the area covered by urban landscapes is increasing all over the world. Urbanization can change local habitats and decrease connectivity among these habitats, with important consequences for species interactions. While several studies have found a major imprint of urbanization on plant–insect interactions, the effe...
With climate change, plant-feeding insects increase their number of annual generations (voltinism). However, to what degree the emergence of a new herbivore generation affects the parasitism rate has not been explored. We performed a field experiment to test whether the parasitism rate differs between the first and the second generations of a speci...
Increasing food production while avoiding negative impacts on biodiversity constitutes one of the main challenges of our time. Traditional silvopastoral systems like Iberian oak savannas (“dehesas”) set an example, where free-range livestock has been reared for centuries while preserving a high natural value. Nevertheless, factors decreasing produc...
Aim
Leaves support a large diversity of fungi, which are known to cause plant diseases, induce plant defences or influence leaf senescence and decomposition. To advance our understanding of how foliar fungal communities are structured and assembled, we assessed to what extent leaf flush and latitude can explain the within‐ and among‐tree variation...
Climate change has been shown to advance spring phenology, increase the number of insect generations per year (multivoltinism) and increase pathogen infection levels.
However, we lack insights into the effects of plant spring phenology and the biotic environment on the preference and performance of multivoltine herbivores and whether such effects e...
Many plant species produce multiple leaf flushes during the growing season, which might have major consequences for within‐plant variation in chemistry and species interactions. Yet, we lack a theoretical or empirical framework for how differences among leaf flushes might shape variation in damage by insects and diseases.
We assessed the impact of...
Insect phenology consists of the timing of life events, as well as the number of generations (voltinism). While several studies have focused on the impact of climate on the timing of seasonal events, or the voltinism of single species, we have few insights into the factors that shape patterns of voltinism within ecological communities. Importantly,...
Between 2009 and 2018, information was collected about spider communities in holm oak forests in the Spanish provinces of Cáceres and Toledo. As a result of the study, a list of 189 species is presented, of which Gonatium dayense Si- mon, 1884 is added to the European list. Simultaneously, the list of spiders known from the provinces of Cáceres and...
Iberian man-made oak savannahs (so called dehesas) are traditional silvopastoral systems with a high natural value. Scattered trees provide shelter and additional food to livestock (cattle in our study sites), which also makes possible for animals depending on trees in a grass-dominated landscape to be present. We compared dehesas with nearby treel...
Iberian oak savannahs are traditional silvopastoral systems in which acorns constitute a key food source for livestock. Acorn feeding insects provoke significant economic losses; however, the high natural value of Iberian oak savannahs precludes any chemical treatment. This paper shows a novel way of biological pest control based on promoting lives...
The effects of climate change on oaks Quercus spp. constitute a main environmental concern for the conservation of temperate forests. In this context, we assessed the consequences of longer droughts on the interactions between the holm oak Quercus ilex L. and its main acorn pests. Infested acorns were prematurely abscised before reaching their pote...
Premise:
Abiotic factors and plant species traits have been shown to drive latitudinal gradients in herbivory, and yet, population-level factors have been largely overlooked within this context. One such factor is plant density, which may influence the strength of herbivory and may vary with latitude.
Methods:
We measured insect herbivory and co...
DNA barcoding identification needs a good characterization of intraspecific genetic divergence to establish the limits between species. Yet, the number of barcodes per species is many times low and geographically restricted. A poor coverage of the species distribution range may hamper identification, especially when undersampled areas host genetica...
Hoverflies are frequently used as biodiversity indicators and are targets of ecological studies across Europe. How hoverfly diversity responds to ecological variables is essential for species and habitat conservation. The present study is a first attempt to assess the hoverfly diversity of deciduous woodlands of Pyrenean oak (Quercus pyrenaica) in...
Background and aims:
Classic theory on geographical gradients in plant-herbivore interactions assumes that herbivore pressure and plant defences increase towards warmer and more stable climates found at lower latitudes. However, the generality of this trend has been recently called into question by conflicting empirical evidence. One possible expl...
Hoja divulgadora en la que se ofrecen claves precisas para la identificación de las clases de orugas que pueden aparecer en las encinas de la dehesa, facilitando así la toma de decisiones en la gestión de este tipo de plagas. Las hojas divulgadoras combinan el rigor temático con la claridad expositiva, configurándose como un modelo en la gestión de...
La aplicación de las nuevas Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación (TICs) está revolucionando el sector agropecuario; en este artículo mostramos cómo pueden contribuir a desarrollar una “ganadería de precisión” en las dehesas de porcino. La bellota es imprescindible para la producción de una carne de calidad, y su baja disponibilidad y/o a...
Agrotis garretasorum Blázquez, Garretas & Gaytán, 2018 sp. n. , a new species of Agrotis Ochsenheimer, 1816 from the province of Cáceres (Spain) is illustrated and described, based on external and internal morphology as well as molecular data from the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit I gene (COI) 658 bp
Insect herbivory decreases plant fitness by constraining plant growth, survival and reproductive output. Most studies on the effects of herbivory in trees rely on correlational inter-individual comparisons and could thus be affected by confounding factors linked to both herbivory and plant performance. Using the Mediterranean Holm oak (Quercus ilex...
Las orugas de lepidópteros heteróceros son los defoliadores más importantes de las encinas Quercus
ilex de las dehesas. Conocer su biología y las interacciones que establecen con otros organismos es
clave para saber qué papel juegan en estos sistemas agroforestales y plantear medidas de control de
sus poblaciones. Este trabajo analiza si, como ocur...
Las dehesas son un sistema agroforestal tradicional que combina pastos con arbolado
(principalmente encinas Quercus ilex y alcornoques Quercus suber) y que ocupa cientos de miles de
hectáreas en la Península Ibérica. Las orugas de varias especies de lepidópteros se alimentan de las
hojas de encina y pueden causar defoliaciones intensas, las cuales...
Questions
Questions (3)
I would like to be able to detect parasitoids in lepidopteran larvae. Mostly targeting species from Eulophidae family.
Dear all,
I would like to know if is possible to run a model with a categorical response variable plus some categorical predictors (and its interactions) and a random factor in R?
If yes, any advice (i.e. R-packages)?
Thank you...
I would like to know if the content of a group of lepidopteran caterpillars could be sequenced trying to identify only the parasitoids they contain (endo- and exo-). Maybe there are some specific primers for hymenopterans that avoid amplifying the lepidopteran tissue? Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance,
Alvaro
