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Introduction
Current institution
Additional affiliations
December 2018 - present
August 2016 - present
The National Museum of Natural Sciences & Centre d'Estudis Avançat de Blanes
Position
- Research Assistant
February 2010 - July 2010
Education
February 1994 - July 1996
September 1988 - June 1993
Publications
Publications (85)
Ecological models predict that, in the face of climate change, taxa occupying steep altitudinal gradients will shift their distributions, leading to the contraction or extinction of the high-elevation (cold-adapted) taxa. However, hybridization between eco-morphologically divergent taxa commonly occurs in nature and may lead to alternative evolutio...
Background
The axial skeleton is one of the defining evolutionary landmarks of vertebrates. How this structure develops and how it has evolved in the different vertebrate lineages is, however, a matter of debate. Vertebrae and vertebral structures are derived from the embryonic somites, although the mechanisms of development are different between l...
The recent discovery of a plethodontid salamander, Karsenia koreana, in Korea challenged our understanding of the biogeographic history of the family Plethodontidae, by far the largest family of salamanders, which otherwise is distributed in the New World with a few European species. Molecular studies suggest that Karsenia forms a clade with Hydrom...
Phylogeography involves the analysis of gene genealogies in a spatial context, to infer the historical processes that have shaped the current population structure and distribution of organisms. The field has expanded rapidly in the last three decades, triggered by important technical and methodological advances. However, these technical improvement...
The way in which novelties that lead to macroevolutionary events originate is a major question in evolutionary biology, and one that can be addressed using the fire salamander (Salamandra salamandra) as a model system. It is exceptional among amphibians in displaying intraspecific diversity of reproductive strategies. In S. salamandra, two distinct...
Lygodactylus geckos represent a well-documented radiation of miniaturized lizards with diverse life-history traits
that are widely distributed in Africa, Madagascar, and South America. The group has diversified into numerous
species with high levels of morphological similarity. The evolutionary processes underlying such diversification
remain enigm...
Since the last update of the list of the Spanish herpetofauna in 2018, recent studies have provided new evidence supporting the need to implement taxonomic changes in several groups. In this work, we present an updated reference list for the Spanish herpetofauna, which currently includes 132 native or historically introduced species, i.e. 37 amphib...
Distinct lineages of the grasshopper Chorthippus parallelus (Orthoptera: Acrididae) form well‐known hybrid zones (HZs) both in the Pyrenees and the Alps mountain ranges in South Europe. These HZs represent unique experimental systems to identify “key genes” that maintain genetic boundaries between emerging species. The Iberian endemism C. p. erythr...
Aim
Discerning the relative role of geographical and ecological factors in promoting diversification is central to our understanding of the origin and maintenance of biodiversity. We explore the roles of geology and ecological tolerance in the diversification of a group of wingless beetles with low dispersal potential.
Location
Western Mediterrane...
Unravelling the evolutionary history of taxa requires solid delimitation of the traits characterising these. This can be challenging especially in groups with a highly complex taxonomy. The squat lobster family Munididae contains more than 450 species distributed among 21 genera, Munida being the most speciose (~300 species). Previous phylogenetic...
Protists, the micro-eukaryotes that are neither plants, animals nor fungi build up the greatest part of eukaryotic diversity on Earth. Yet, their evolutionary histories and patterns are still mostly ignored, and their complexity overlooked. Protists are often assumed to keep stable morphologies for long periods of time (morphological stasis). In th...
The geographic distribution of a species is shaped by its biology and by environmental and palaeogeographic factors that interact at different spatial-temporal scales, which leads to distributions and diversification patterns observed between and within lineages. The darkling beetle genus Pimelia has been diversifying for more than 31.2 Mya showing...
The geographic distribution of a species is shaped by its biology and by environmental and palaeogeographic factors that interact at different spatial-temporal scales, which leads to distributions and diversification patterns observed between and within lineages. The darkling beetle genus Pimelia has been diversifying for more than 31.2 Mya showing...
Several European freshwater crayfish species are currently included in one of the IUCN Red list categories. In the Iberian Peninsula, the native Austropotamobius pallipes species complex (the white clawed crayfish, WCC) has experienced a drastic decline since 1973. Implementing conservation management strategies for this species requires a better u...
The taxonomy of Angolan Hemidactylus has recently been revised. However, the lack of fresh material for some groups and regions, has led to the misidentification of some taxa and an underestimation of actual diversity in others. To shed light on the evolutionary history and systematics of Angolan Hemidactylus, we generated a new phylogenetic hypoth...
Species richness in the genus Pristimantis is underestimated due to the existence of morphologically cryptic species. This is worsened by the low sampling effort and the lack of studies using genetic markers. Here, we use molecular and morphological data to determine the phylogenetic relationships of a clade of Pristimantis distributed throughout m...
The taxonomy of Angolan Hemidactylus has recently been revised. However, the lack of fresh material for some groups and regions, has led to the misidentification of some taxa and an underestimation of actual diversity in others. To shed light on the evolutionary history and systematics of Angolan Hemidactylus , we generated a new phylogenetic hypot...
The subgenus Amblypteraca Mas-Peinado, Buckley, Ruiz & García-París, 2018 of Pimelia Fabricius, 1775, is restricted to the southern Iberian Peninsula and western Maghreb (northern and western Morocco). The distribution of Amblypteraca throughout the African-European edges overlaps largely with the geographic range of the subgenus Amblyptera, which...
Landscape features shape patterns of gene flow among populations, ultimately determining where taxa lay along the continuum between panmixia to complete reproductive isolation. Gene flow can be restricted, leading to population differentiation in two non-exclusive ways: “physical isolation”, in which geographic distance in combination with the land...
The ecology, abundance and diversity of galatheoid squat lobsters make them an ideal group to study deep‐sea diversification processes. Here, we reconstructed the evolutionary and biogeographic history of Leiogalathea, a genus of circum‐tropical deep‐sea squat lobsters, in order to compare patterns and processes that have affected shallow‐water and...
Identifying the evolutionary processes that underlie morphological variation at the intraspecific level is cornerstone for understanding the drivers of phenotypic diversity at higher macro-evolutionary scales. The fire salamander, Salamandra salamandra, exhibits exceptional intraspecific variation in multiple phenotypic traits (i.e. body size, head...
Genetic connectivity studies are essential to understand species diversity and genetic structure and to assess the role of potential factors affecting connectivity, thus enabling sound management and conservation strategies. Here, we analyzed the patterns of genetic variability in the marine snail Gibbula divaricata from five coastal locations in t...
The genus Coralliogalathea of the family Galatheidae is easily differentiated from other genera in the family by its small size, the presence of three to four small lateral teeth on the rostrum and the lack of the first pair of gonopods in males. The genus currently consists of only a single species, Coralliogalathea humilis, which lives in close a...
The genus Pimelia Fabricius is the most speciose in the tribe Pimeliini (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae). It consists of approximately 320 species distributed mainly in xeric environments in the western Palaearctic region and northern deserts in the Afrotropical region. Pimelia is a very heterogenous group despite its conserved morphology. Based on two...
Aim
Investigate the role of colonization history and life history traits on contemporary patterns of genetic variation in two salamander species in a Holocene island‐mainland system.
Location
Rías Baixas, north‐western Spain.
Methods
We analysed mitochondrial and species‐specific nuclear markers (eight microsatellite markers) in 16 populations of...
Delimiting species boundaries is a fundamental yet challenging task that has been especially problematic in morphologically conserved lineages. The use of genetic markers and phylogenetic approaches has proven of paramount importance to resolve these cases. Using the genus Unio as a case study, we have analysed two mitochondrial markers, cytochrome...
Excel file listing transcripts that are lateral line-enriched at least 1.85-fold (log2fold 0.89).
DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.24197.008
- [...]
The anamniote lateral line system, comprising mechanosensory neuromasts and electrosensory ampullary organs, is a useful model for investigating the developmental and evolutionary diversification of different organs and cell types. Zebrafish neuromast development is increasingly well understood, but neither zebrafish nor $\textit{Xenopus}$ is elect...
The distribution of circum-Mediterranean fauna was dramatically affected by palaeogeographical events during the Cenozoic. The biogeographical history of freshwater mussels is related to the development of the continental watershed during the Tertiary and Pleistocene glacial cycles. Our study model is Potomida littoralis (Cuvier, 1798), a Palaearct...
Resumen: Además del nombre científico en latín, es cada vez más frecuente asignar a las especies un nombre común. Con ello se intenta conseguir que los naturalistas y gestores ambientales se transmitan información entre ellos sin equívocos usando nom-bres fáciles de recordar y de pronunciar; es decir, en la práctica reemplazan directamente al nombr...
The power of phylogeographic inference resides in its ability to integrate information from multiple sources in an iterative hypothesis-testing framework. In this paper, we build upon previous mtDNA-based hypotheses about the evolutionary history of the Iberian newt Lissotriton boscai using sequences of the highly variable nuclear β-fibrinogen intr...
http://revista.mncn.csic.es/
Amphibian reproductive modes are diverse and are characterised by complex
adaptations, including vast variability in life history traits and different parental investment
strategies. For instance, viviparity is rare in urodeles despite the potential ecological
advantages gained in such populations by having semi-independency from water. The fire
sa...
Nemognatha plaumanni Borchmann, 1942 (Coleoptera: Meloidae: Nemognathinae) was described
from a single specimen found in Brazil, and since its description no additional information
has been published on the species. During a field survey in Venezuela, we found
one individual morphologically assignable to the species. In this note, we report and dis...
a b s t r a c t Cranial neurogenic placodes and the neural crest make essential contributions to key adult character-istics of all vertebrates, including the paired peripheral sense organs and craniofacial skeleton. Neurogenic placode development has been extensively characterized in representative jawed vertebrates (gnathostomes) but not in jawles...
Ethnopharmacological relevance:
Beetles of the family Meloidae (blister beetles) are often reported in pharmacological literature because of their content of cantharidin. Cantharidin has a long history in human medicine and was commonly applied in the 19th and the early 20th centuries, although its use has been progressively abandoned since then....
Advertisement calls are important in species recognition and reproduction in many animal taxa and, hence, sexual selection drives sound signals to be species-specific traits. However, the evolution of these sexual traits also likely reflects the evolutionary history of taxa. Here, we study the phylogenetic signal underlying advertisement calls in t...
We performed a comparative osteological analysis of middle trunk vertebrae (represented by V6) of representative species of all living genera of Salamandridae (Amphibia, Caudata). The qualitative morphological characters used were adapted from the traditional palaeontological literature; using this data set we inferred a phylogenetic hypothesis for...
Reproductive modes in salamanders (Amphibia, Caudata)
are highly diverse. Viviparity, for instance, implies the
retention of the developing embryos inside the females
until the end of the gestation, at which point they deliver
fully developed terrestrial juveniles. From an ecological
point of view, the evolution of viviparity is highly significant,...
Teratologies are frequent among vertebrates, but with differing prevalence among groups. For instance,
cases of bicephaly are extremely scarce in amphibians, in contrast with other groups, like reptiles. Here we report the first case of bicephaly in Lissotriton boscai. The anomaly is a consequence of the duplication of the skeleton axis and the sub...
Neurogenic placodes are transient, thickened patches of embryonic vertebrate head ectoderm that give rise to the paired peripheral sense organs and most neurons in cranial sensory ganglia. We present the first analysis of gene expression during neurogenic placode development in a basal actinopterygian (ray-finned fish), the North American paddlefis...
The state of development of advanced embryos of the direct-developing Ecuadorian caecilian Caecilia orientalis (Caeciliidae: Gymnophiona: Amphibia) was examined. Because it is established that development is correlated with reproductive modes in a number of features, we included comparison with taxa that represent the major reproductive modes and a...
Organization and variability are core concepts in evolutionary biology. Nature is variable, but also highly organized, and this organization is both a consequence and a causality of the evolutionary process. In order to analyze the evolution of phenotypes, the organizational properties of the system studied have to be considered. Here, we analyze u...
Nomenclature. This text (a) proposes vernacular names for Bufo siculus n.sp., (b) clarifies its etymology, (c) discusses synonymy and appropriateness of this new name according to International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, and (d) discusses the applicability of the name Bufo balearicus Boettger, 1880. The file includes references [96] to [104].
Permits. Contains data for five collection permits for this study.
Localities, specimen and voucher data and locality data. Contains locality numbers as in Fig. 1, including geographic coordinates, GenBank accession numbers for the mitochondrial control region, the 16S rRNA, the RAG1-gene and the tropomyosine intron.
Green toads of other circum-Sicilian islands. These are short biogeographic comments on green toads on Circum-Sicilian islands referencing the relevant literature. The file includes references [105] to [110].
Type description. A verbal morphological description of the holotype of Bufo siculus n.sp. and a table containing morphometric data for the holotype and two adult paratypes. The file includes reference [111].
Little attention has been paid to the consequences of the last landbridge between Africa and Sicily on Mediterranean biogeography. Previous paleontological and scarce molecular data suggest possible faunal exchange later than the well-documented landbridge in the Messinian (5.3 My); however, a possible African origin of recent terrestrial Sicilian...
Se presenta un catálogo taxonómico de los representantes mexicanos de la familia Meloidae que incluye un listado revisado de sinonimias, localidades típicas y registros geográficos publicados de cada una de las especies. La fauna mexicana incluye en la actualidad 255 especies vivientes y una fósil, distribuidas en 21 géneros de las subfamilias Melo...
In Europe, southern peninsulas served as refugia during cold periods in the Pleistocene, acting both as centres of origin of endemisms and as sources from which formerly glaciated areas were recolonized during interglacial periods. Previous studies have revealed that within the main refugial areas, intraspecific lineages often survived in allopatri...
Abstract: J. Manzanilla, D. Sánchez, I. Martínez-Solano, D. Buckley and L. De Sousa. “Natural history, taxonomic notes and conservation status
of Mabuya croizati Horton, 1973 (Reptilia: Scincidae)”. Mabuya croizati Horton, 1973, is a scincid lizard endemic to the Turimiquire Massif, eastern
Cordillera de la Costa, in northern Venezuela. The origina...
Salamandra salamandra is a polymorphic species with seven endemic subspecies in the Iberian Peninsula. Assignment of populations to subspecies in many areas is controversial because of discrepancies between morphological or molecular datasets. One potential intermixing area includes the Sistema Central Mountains, inhabited by S. s. almanzoris, a su...
Salamandra salamandra has an unusual mode of reproduction. Females retain eggs in their oviducts and give birth to aquatic larvae or, in some populations, to fully metamorphosed juveniles. We investigated how variation in the birth size of larvae of five different sibships of S. salamandra affected larval survival, larval growth rates, time to meta...
We used partial sequences of the cytochrome b mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) gene, obtained from 76 individuals representing 45 populations of Iberian Salamandra salamandra plus 15 sequences of additional species of Salamandra and related genera, to investigate contact zones. These zones, identified by earlier allozymic and morphological analyses, are b...
The structure and the histological expression of annual bone growth marks of Moroccan water frogs (Rana saharica) from an arid climate region (northern edge of the Sahara desert) differ from the pattern observed in water frogs from temperate climate regions. At early ages, when growing rates are high, the osteogenic activity of the froglets never s...
We have assessed the consistency of allozyme and morphometric data sets in discriminating water frogs at inter- and intraspecific level. Twenty allozyme loci and 14 morphometric characters were used in a study on Iberian and North African water frogs. The results from the morphometric analysis, using PCA, confirmed the interspecific differences bet...
This study analyses the allozymic variation of 20 presumptive loci in eight populations of Rana saharica from Morocco. Populations were collected from the very different climatic zones of this country: the Rif area, the Atlas mountains and the desert. Moroccan water-frog populations are genetically well differentiated from the geographically closed...
