David Canal

Centre for Ecological Research; Institute of Ecology and Botany · Department of Terrestrial Ecology

Sexually selected phenotypes are key to understanding population and eco-evolutionary dynamics since the expression of these traits is tightly linked to reproduction and population viability. Parasites are major agents of selection that alter both phenotypic expression and fitness. However, the carry-over effects of parasites in early life in selec...

Identifying the environmental drivers of variation in fitness‐related traits is a central objective in ecology and evolutionary biology. Temporal fluctuations of these environmental drivers are often synchronized at large spatial scales. Yet, whether synchronous environmental conditions can generate spatial synchrony in fitness‐related trait values...

Individual animals can react to the changes in their environment by exhibiting behaviors in an individual‐specific way leading to individual differences in phenotypic plasticity. However, the effect of multiple environmental factors on multiple traits is rarely tested. Such a complex approach is necessary to assess the generality of plasticity and...

Behavior is central to interactions with the environment and thus has significant consequences for individual fitness. Sexual selection and demographic processes have been shown to independently shape behavioral evolution. However, while some studies have tested the simultaneous effects of these forces, no studies have investigated their interplay...

Most studies of phenotypic selection in the wild have focused on morphological and life-history traits and looked at abiotic (climatic) variation as the main driver of selection. Consequently, our knowledge of the effects of biotic environmental variation on phenotypic selection on sexual traits is scarce. Population density can be considered a pro...

Behavioural variation in courtship has become a central theme in the study of sexual selection. Courtship behaviour can vary consistently between males (between-individual variation) due to inherent characteristics of individuals, but males may also plastically adjust their courtship (within-individual variation) in response to the characteristics...

Mating system theory predicts that social polygyny—when one male forms pair bonds with two females—may evolve by female choice in species with biparental care. Females will accept a polygynous male if the benefit of mating with a male providing high quality genes or rearing resources outweighs the cost of sharing mate assistance in parental care. B...

The origin of natural selection is linked to environmental heterogeneity, which influences variation in relative fitness among phenotypes. However, individuals in wild populations are exposed to a plethora of biotic and abiotic environmental factors. Surprisingly, the relative influence of multiple environmental conditions on relative fitness of ph...

Why females engage in social polygyny remains an unresolved question in species where the resources provided by males maximize female fitness. In these systems, the ability of males to access several females, as well as the willingness of females to mate with an already mated male, and the benefits of this choice, may be constrained by the socio-ec...

The trade-off between current and future reproduction is a cornerstone of life history theory, but the role of within-individual plasticity on life history decisions and its connections with overall fitness and behaviour remains largely unknown. By manipulating available resources for oviposition at the beginning of the reproductive period, we expe...

Pied Flycatchers Ficedula hypoleuca are known to be victims of nest killings in contexts of competition for nest boxes. However, there is only anecdotal information on their opposite role as perpetrators of nest takeovers and occasional killings of other songbirds. Over 31 years we examined whether competition with Great Tits Parus major over nest...

1. The integration and synthesis of the data in different areas of science is drastically slowed and hindered by a lack of standards and networking programmes. Long‐term studies of individually marked animals are not an exception. These studies are especially important as instrumental for understanding evolutionary and ecological processes in the w...

The integration and synthesis of the data in different areas of science is drastically slowed and hindered by a lack of standards and networking programmes. Long-term studies of individually marked animals are not an exception. These studies are especially important as instrumental for understanding evolutionary and ecological processes in the wild...

Why females pair with already mated males and the mechanisms behind variation in such polygynous events within and across populations and years remain open questions. Here, we used a 19-year data set from a pied flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca) population to investigate, through local networks of breeding pairs, the socio-ecological factors related...

The article can be read here for a limited time https://rdcu.be/b0P1v Parasitoid wasps may act as hyperparasites and sometimes regulate the populations of their hosts by a top-down dynamic. Nasonia vitripennis (Walker, 1836) is a generalist gregarious parasitoid that parasitizes several host flies, including the blowfly Protocalliphora Hough, 1899...

Under different environmental conditions, hybridization between the same species might result in different patterns of genetic admixture. Particularly, species pairs with large distribution ranges and long evolutionary history may have experienced several independent hybridization events over time in different zones of overlap. In birds, the divers...

An increasing number of wildlife-vehicle collisions occur each year worldwide, which involves extensive economic costs and constitutes one of the main anthropogenic causes of animal mortality. Because of this, there is an urgent need to identify the factors leading to collision hotspots and thus implementing effective mitigation measures. By using...

Las avispas parasitoides suelen ocupar el tercer nivel de la mayoría de los sistemas multitróficos, actuando así como hiperparásitos y, en ocasiones, regulando las poblaciones de sus hospedadores mediante una dinámica top-down. Nasonia (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae) es una avispa parasitoide gregaria y generalista capaz de parasitar pupas de varias mo...

Nasonia vitripennis is a generalist gregarious parasitoid wasp that parasitizes several host blowflies, which, in turn, parasitize vertebrates. Protocalliphora azurea is one of the host of this parasitoid, whose larvae are hematophagous parasites of bird nestlings. We studied the prevalence of N. vitripennis in P. azurea puparia parasitizing wild p...

An increasing number of wildlife-vehicle collisions occur each year worldwide, which involves extensive economic costs and constitutes one of the main anthropogenic causes of animal mortality. Because of this, there is an urgent need to identify the factors leading to collision hotspots and thus implementing effective mitigation measures. By using...

Dispersers are not a random subset of the source population and there is considerable evidence that they differ from non-dispersers in a number of phenotypic traits. However, it is not clear whether the magnitude and direction of these differences vary over time. Between 1988 and 2016, we investigated patterns of phenotype-dependent dispersal of pi...

Lista de revisores de la revista ECOSISTEMAS durante el bienio Lista de revisores que han completado revisiones durante el bienio 2019-2020. La labor de los revisores es fundamental para que una publicación científica realice su actividad de manera adecuada y cumpla con sus objetivos de calidad. Todos estos investigadores contribuyeron generosament...

According to our best model, polygynously-mated females had lower survival probability (p= 0.51) than monogamous ones (p= 0.59). In the case of males, we did not found survival costs in relation to their mating status (p Monogamous= Polygynous= 0.54).

The rate of occupation of territories or nest locations has been proposed as a suitable surrogate of breeding territory/habitat quality when more precise, but costly, measures are not available. However, whether the frequency of breeding territory occupancy actually reflects its quality regardless of the habitat type is unclear. We address this iss...

Animal-vehicle collisions have become a serious traffic safety issue. Collisions have steadily increased over the last few decades, as have their associated socio-economic costs. Here, we explore the spatial and temporal patterns of animal-vehicle collisions reported to authorities in the province of Seville, southern Spain. Most animal-vehicle col...

Species involved in animal-vehicle collisions reported to authorities in the province of Seville (Spain) in the years 2014 and 2015. Collision data were provided by the Provincial Directorate of Traffic of Seville (DGT). (PDF)

Distribution of dog-vehicle collisions in Andalusia. Collisions are shown in relation to (a) the month and (b) night-light levels used as a proxy of the distance to urban areas (see main text for further details). Black color indicates points without night-light whereas white color shows points with the highest night-light levels. The inset map ind...

Magnitude, composition and spatiotemporal patterns of vertebrate roadkill at regional scales: a study in southern Spain. Although roadkill studies on a large scale are challenging, they can provide valuable information to assess the impact of road traffic on animal populations. Over 22 months (between July 2009–June 2010, and April 2011–March 2012)...

In the last two decades, unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) have experienced an exponential development. Originally conceived for military use, technological advances and a dramatic reduction of prices are leading to widespread use of UASs in environmental disciplines including remote sensing, ecology, wildlife management or environmental monitoring...

Several hypotheses predict that the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) drives mating preference in females. Olfactory, color or morphological traits are often found as reliable signals of the MHC profile, but the role of avian song mediating MHC‐based female choice remains largely unexplored. We investigated the relationship between several MHC...

Melanin-based colouration of tegument structures may be related to variability in the expression of certain strategies or behaviours within a species, including the propensity to disperse. This is because melanin synthesis may be physiologically linked to certain behaviours and personality traits, as proposed by the hypothesis of the pleiotropy in...

In this chapter, we present the results of several flight campaigns carried out in 2015 and 2016 using multirotor Unmanned Airborne Vehicles (UAVs) over Slender-billed Gull (Chroicocephalus genei) colonies in the Doñana Nature Space, south west Spain. The images were taken at different times during the breeding season. The requirements for the flig...

The Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) is an emblematic example of conservation. Currently, the species is progressively recovering in population size and range after dramatic reductions as a consequence of human persecution and the use of pesticides in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Here, we analysed the population trend and productivity in relat...

Long-term monitoring of individually marked animals is usually required for reliable estimation of numerous life history parameters. However, capture, marking and manipulation can dramatically alter the animals' behaviour after capture, and thus affect subsequent recapture success. Here, we used a pied flycatcher, Ficedula hypoleuca, population as...

Las aves se caracterizan por ser generalmente filopátricas. Sin embargo, la variación en la dispersión natal (movimientos individuales desde el lugar de nacimiento al de la primera reproducción) puede depender de muchos factores, entre los que destacan la calidad del hábitat, la densidad de competidores, el fenotipo individual y el sexo. En este es...

La selección de hábitat puede acarrear consecuencias evolutivas importantes, aunque dependen en gran medida de los mecanismos subyacentes, incluyendo las preferencias por el hábitat natal, las determinadas genéticamente y las que dependen del fenotipo. Aunque todas pueden operar simultáneamente, su contribución relativa a la diferenciación poblacio...

The Crowned Solitary Eagle (Buteogallus coronatus) is one of the rarest and most severely threatened birds of prey in the Neotropical region. We studied levels of neutral genetic diversity, population structure, and the demographic history of the species using 55 contemporary samples covering a large fraction of the species range, which were genoty...

Background: Habitat selection may have profound evolutionary consequences, but they strongly depend on the underlying preference mechanism, including genetically-determined, natal habitat and phenotype-dependent preferences. It is known that different mechanisms may operate at the same time, yet their relative contribution to population differentia...

Avian nests are frequently concealed or camouflaged, but a number of species builds noticeable nests or use conspicuous materials for nest decoration. In most cases, nest decoration has a role in mate choice or provides thermoregulatory or antiparasitic benefits. In territorial species however, decorations may serve additional or complementary func...

Fig A. Example image of the hexacopter during the experimental flights around black kite nests. Table A. Nest detection probability (A) and latency to nest detection (B) by human observers in relation to decoration treatment (decorated and non-decorated) in the approaching snapshots. Aside of the results shown in Table 1 of the main text, the model...

Figure S1. Phenotypical diagnosis of target sparrow species in Algerian populations; A) five major plumage traits that are distinctive for house sparrows (B: P. domesticus) and Spanish sparrows (C: P. hispaniolensis) but are intermediate to a variable degree in a considerable number of putative hybrid individuals (D) per local population (P. domest...

Figure S2. Phenotypical comparison of Mediterranean island populations (Sicily, Ustica, Lampedusa) of the Italian hybrid form, P. italiae.

Figure S3. Haplotype network of European and North African sparrow populations (P. domesticus, P. hispaniolensis, P. italiae and North African hybrids) based on 707 bp of the mitochondrial ND2; populations of origin are color‐coded for each haplotype.

Table S1. Results of principal component analysis (PCA) of four biometric measurements (length of body, wing, bill and tarsus) from male and female house sparrows (P. domesticus), Spanish sparrows (P. hispaniolensis) and their hybrids; eigenvalues and factor loadings for the first two principal components (PC1, PC2) based on a covariance matrix and...

A stabilized hybrid form of the house sparrow (Passer domesticus) and the Spanish sparrow (P. hispaniolensis) is known as Passer italiae from the Italian Peninsula and a few Mediterranean islands. The growing attention for the Italian hybrid sparrow and increasing knowledge on its biology and genetic constitution greatly contrast the complete lack...

The matching habitat choice hypothesis holds that individuals with different phenotypes actively select the habitats to which they are best adapted, hence maximizing fitness. Despite the potential implications of matching habitat choice for many ecological and evolutionary processes, very few studies have tested its predictions. Here, we use a 26-y...

Several hypotheses predict a relationship between parasite burden and risk-taking behavior, but the underlying causal mechanisms are poorly understood due to the scarcity of experimental studies and the neglected focus on immune defense. Here, in 3 sets of field studies on the collared flycatcher, Ficedula albicollis, we investigated how among-male...

Gene flow has long been considered as a force opposing the diversifying effects of natural selection. Recent research, however, has challenged this traditional assumption by revealing new ways in which gene flow through dispersal can reinforce evolutionary change. Here, we report an intriguing pattern of genetic and phenotypic differentiation at a...

The relationship between genetic diversity and fitness, a major issue in evolutionary and conservation biology, is expected to be stronger in traits affected by many loci and those directly influencing fitness. Here we explore the influence of heterozygosity measured at 15 neutral markers on individual survival, one of the most important parameters...

Although variation in the dorsal plumage colour of male European Pied Flycatchers Ficedula hypoleuca has received a great deal of attention, females of the species have been usually considered to be nearly uniformly monochromatic brown. Using reflectance spectrophotometry, we explore the age-dependent variation of plumage colour in females. We dise...

Global climate change is one of the major driving forces for adaptive shifts in migration and breeding phenology and possibly impacts demographic changes if a species fails to adapt sufficiently. In Western Europe, pied flycatchers (Ficedula hypoleuca) have insufficiently adapted their breeding phenology to the ongoing advance of food peaks within...

Gene flow through dispersal has traditionally been thought to function as a force opposing evolutionary differentiation. However, directional gene flow may actually reinforce divergence of populations in close proximity. This study documents the phenotypic differentiation over more than two decades in body size (tarsus length) at a very short spati...

Phenotypic plasticity provides the potential for individuals to rapidly adjust key life-history events to changing environmental conditions. Population-level changes result from individuals responding to changing environmental cues. However, individuals may respond differently and their ability to modulate the intensity of their plastic responses m...

Ornaments displayed by females have often been denied evolutionary interest due to their frequently reduced expression relative to males, habitually attributed to a genetic correlation between the sexes. We estimated annual and lifetime reproductive success of female pied flycatchers (Ficedula hypoleuca) and applied capture-mark-recapture models to...

El flujo génico se ha concebido tradicionalmente como la principal fuerza que se opone a la diferenciación evolutiva. Sin embargo, ante un flujo génico direccional, los movimientos dispersivos podrían reforzar la divergencia entre poblaciones asociadas a ambientes distintos. El presente estudio, realizado entre los años 1988 y 2011, documenta la di...

Extra pair paternity is widespread in birds, but its high variability across years, populations, and species is to a great extent unre-solved. Here we explored, during 2 breeding seasons, population and individual accessibility to fertile females at different spa-tiotemporal scales in a population of pied flycatchers (Ficedula hypoleuca) to underst...

This article documents the addition of 171 microsatellite marker loci and 27 pairs of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) sequencing primers to the Molecular Ecology Resources Database. Loci were developed for the following species: Bombus pauloensis, Cephalorhynchus heavisidii, Cercospora sojina, Harpyhaliaetus coronatus, Hordeum vulgare, Lachnol...

Protandry, the earlier arrival of males than females to breeding areas, is widespread in birds, but its underlying mechanisms are far from well understood. The two, not mutually exclusive most highly supported hypoth-eses to explain avian protandry postulate that it has evolved from intrasexual male competition to acquire the best territories ("ran...

Extra-pair paternity has the potential to increase male reproductive success and in turn the potential for sexual selection to act on male traits predicting extra pair mate success. There is large variation among European populations of pied flycatchers (Ficedula hypoleuca) in the extent to which male traits predict success in extra pair mating beh...

The genetic correlation between the sexes in the expression of secondary sex traits in wild vertebrate populations has attracted very few previous empirical efforts of field researchers. In southern European populations of pied flycatchers, a sexually selected male ornament is also expressed by a proportion of females. Additive genetic variances in...

Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) has drawn the attention of evolutionary biologists due to its importance in crucial biological processes, such as sexual selection and immune response in jawed vertebrates. However, the characterization of classical MHC genes subjected to the effects of natural selection still remains elusive in many vertebrat...

This article documents the addition of 283 microsatellite marker loci to the Molecular Ecology Resources Database. Loci were developed for the following species: Agalinis acuta; Ambrosia artemisiifolia; Berula erecta; Casuarius casuarius; Cercospora zeae-maydis; Chorthippus parallelus; Conyza canadensis; Cotesia sesamiae; Epinephelus acanthistius;...

Nine polymorphic microsatellite loci for the pied flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca), from a wild population in Spain are isolated and their variability described on individuals. The number of alleles per locus ranged from 6 to 41 and observed heterozygosity ranged from 0.75 to 0.98. These markers are being used to study mating strategies in Ficedula...

Nine polymorphic microsatellite loci for the pied flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca), from a wild population in Spain are isolated and their variability described on 70 individuals. The number of alleles per locus ranged from 6 to 41 and observed heterozygosity ranged from 0.75 to 0.98. These markers are being used to study mating strategies in Ficedu...

Control over copulation duration is a potentially important generator of sexual conflict that has received little empirical attention. The copulatory behavior of the bruchid beetle Callosobruchus maculatus may reflect a sexual conflict over copulation duration. Males have spines on their intromittent organs that puncture the female reproductive tra...