Germán Orizaola

University of Oviedo | UNIOVI · Department of Organisms and Systems Biology

Climate change is causing increases in temperature and in the frequency of extreme weather events. Under this scenario, organisms should maintain or develop strategies to cope with environmental fluctuations, such as the capacity to modify growth trajectories. However, altering growth can have negative consequences for organisms’ fitness. Here, we...

Human activity is changing climatic conditions at an unprecedented rate. The impact of these changes may be especially acute on ectotherms since they have limited capacities to use metabolic heat to maintain their body temperature. An increase in temperature is likely to increase the growth rate of ectothermic animals, and may also induce thermal s...

Radioactive contamination in the form of ionizing radiation can be a devastating pollutant because it has the potential to cause damage to DNA and other biomolecules. Anthropogenic sources of ionizing radiation include accidents in nuclear power plants, such as the one in Chernobyl 1986, which caused long-term radioactive pollution. Studies on anim...

Human actions are altering ecosystems worldwide. Among human‐released pollutants, ionizing radiation arises as a rare but potentially devastating threat for natural systems. The Chornobyl accident (1986) represents the largest release of radioactive material to the environment. Our aim was to examine how exposure to radiation from the Chornobyl acc...

The accident that occurred at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant (Ukraine, 1986) contaminated a large extension of territory after the deposition of radioactive material. It is still under debate whether the chronic exposure to the radiation levels currently present in the area has long-term effects on organisms, such as decreases in longevity. Here...

Pollutants, such as ionizing radiation, released at high levels by human activities can shape ecological and evolutionary processes. The accident occurred at Chornobyl nuclear power plant (Ukraine, April 1986) contaminated a large extension of territory after the deposition of radioactive material. Beyond the immediate negative impact caused by the...

Background Individual functional modifications shape the ability of wildlife populations to cope with anthropogenic environmental changes. But instead of adaptive response, human-altered environments can generate a succession of deleterious functional changes leading to the extinction of the population. To study how persistent anthropogenic changes...

Radioactive contamination has the potential to cause damage to DNA and other biomolecules. Anthropogenic sources of radioactive contamination include accidents in nuclear power plants, such as the one in Chornobyl in 1986 which caused long-term radioactive pollution. Studies on animals within radioactive zones have provided us with a greater unders...

Ionizing radiation has the potential to damage organic molecules and decrease the health and survival of wildlife. The accident at the Chornobyl Nuclear Plant (Ukraine, 1986) led to the largest release of radioactive material to the environment. Among the different organs of a vertebrate, the liver plays a crucial role in detoxification processes,...

Understanding the effects of the chronic exposure to ionizing radiation in wild organisms is essential in order to evaluate the environmental impact of nuclear accidents. Amphibians are an ideal group for the study of the effects that ionizing radiation has on wildlife, due to their relatively long lifespan, low dispersal capacities and use of both...

Despite the ubiquity of pollutants in the environment, their long‐term ecological consequences are not always clear and still poorly studied. This is the case concerning the radioactive contamination of the environment following the major nuclear accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Notwithstanding the implications of evolutionary process...

Ionizing radiation can damage organic molecules, causing detrimental effects on human and wildlife health. The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (1986) represents the largest release of radioactive material to the environment. An accurate estimation of the current exposure to radiation in wildlife, often reduced to ambient dose rate ass...

Background Human actions have altered natural ecosystems worldwide. Among the many pollutants released to the environment, ionizing radiation can cause severe damage at different molecular and functional levels. The accident in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (1986) caused the largest release of ionizing radiation to the environment in human hist...

Ionizing radiation can damage organic molecules, causing detrimental effects on human and wildlife health. The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (1986) represents the largest release of radioactive material to the environment. An accurate estimation of the current exposure to radiation in wildlife, often reduced to ambient dose rate ass...

En la bahía de Santander se localiza la única colonia de charrán común de todo el Cantábrico, con la peculiaridad de que la mayor parte de las parejas nidifican en estructuras artificiales. Esta población ha sido objeto de seguimiento durante tres décadas por parte de técnicos y voluntarios de la Sociedad Española de Ornitología (SEO/BirdLife).

Despite the ubiquity of pollutants in the environment, their long-term ecological consequences are not always clear and still poorly studied. This is the case concerning the radioactive contamination of the environment following the major nuclear accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Notwithstanding the implications of evolutionary process...

Changes in phenology are among the most pervasive effects of current climate change. Modifications in the timing of life‐cycle events can affect the behavior, physiology and life‐history of wildlife. However, organisms can develop compensatory strategies in order to reduce the costs of phenological alterations. Here, we examine the extent and limit...

The magnitude and ecological impact of climate change varies with latitude. Several recent models have shown that tropical ectotherms face the greatest risk from warming because they currently experience temperatures much closer to their physiological optimum than temperate taxa. Even a small increase in temperature may thus result in steep fitness...

The 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine caused the worst human-caused release of radioactive material in history. Initial forecasts considered that the area affected by radioactive contamination would be devoid of life for millennia. Three decades later, the biodiversity of the area has completely recovered and all the lar...

Environmental pollution can inflict biological damage to organisms affecting their life histories. Here, we use the Eastern treefrogs (Hyla orientalis) as a study model, to examine the consequences that living in areas contaminated by radioactive material from the Chernobyl accident, occurred in 1986, had on the diversity and composition of gut mic...

The magnitude and ecological impact of climate change varies with latitude. Several recent models have shown that tropical ectotherms face the greatest risk from warming because they currently experience temperatures much closer to their physiological optimum than temperate taxa. Even a small increase in temperature may thus result in steep fitness...

Fast‐growing genotypes living in time‐constrained environments are often more prone to predation, suggesting that growth‐predation risk trade‐offs are important factors maintaining variation in growth along climatic gradients. However, the mechanisms underlying how fast growth increases predation‐mediated mortality are not well understood. Here, we...

En la bahía de Santander se localiza la única colonia de charrán común de todo el Cantábrico, con la singularidad de que, a lo largo de los últimos años, la mayor parte de las parejas han nidificado sobre estructuras artificiales. Desde la instalación de la primera pareja en el año 1989, en un barco semihundido en la Dársena Sur de Raos, se ha prod...

Organisms are exposed to multiple sources of stress in nature. When confronted with a stressful period affecting growth and development, compensatory responses allow the restoration of individual fitness, providing an important buffering mechanism against climatic and other environmental variability. However, trade-offs between increased growth/dev...

Organisms living in temperate environments, with only a short time window for growth and reproduction, often develop compensatory responses after experiencing a period of adverse conditions. Parents can also affect growth and development trajectories of their offspring in order to provide them with better chances to survive. In our study, we delaye...

1.In seasonal environments, modifications in the phenology of life-history events can alter the strength of time-constraints experienced by organisms. Offspring can compensate for a change in timing of hatching by modifying their growth and development trajectories. However, intra- and inter -specific interactions may affect these compensatory resp...

Temperature can play an important role in determining the feeding preferences of ectotherms. In light of the warmer temperatures arising with the current climatic changes omnivorous ectotherms may perform diet shifts towards higher herbivory to optimize energetic intake. Such diet shifts may also occur during heat waves, which are projected to beco...

As organisms living in temperate environments often have only a short time window for growth and reproduction, their life-history strategies are expected to be influenced by these time-constraints. Parents may alter the pace of offspring life-history as a response to changes in breeding phenology. However, the responses to changes in time-constrain...

Many organisms show predator-induced behavioural and morphological phenotypic plasticity. These defence mechanisms are often expressed simultaneously. To estimate the relative importance of these two defences, we conducted a laboratory experiment using tadpoles of the common frog (Rana temporaria) as prey and Aeshna dragonfly larvae as predators. W...

Accurate predictions regarding how climate change affects species and populations are crucial for the development of effective conservation measures. However, models forecasting the impact of climate change on natural environments do not often consider the geographic variation of an organism's life history. We examined variation in developmental pl...

Figure S1. Temperature characteristics of the study areas (see main text for details). Table S1. Mixed models ANOVAS and univariate general linear models for life‐history traits. Table S2. Univariate general linear models for temperature variables.

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The timing of seasonal life-history events is assumed to evolve to synchronize life cycles with the availability of resources. Temporal variation in breeding time can have severe fitness consequences for the offspring, but the interplay between adult reproductive decisions and offspring phenotypes remains poorly understood. Transgenerational plasti...

Invasive alien predators can impose strong selection on native prey populations and induce rapid evolutionary change in the invaded communities. However, studies on evolutionary responses to invasive predators are often complicated by the lack of replicate populations differing in coexistence time with the predator, which would allow determining ho...

Predator-induced phenotypic plasticity has been widely documented in response to native predators, but studies examining the extent to which prey can respond to exotic invasive predators are scarce. As native prey often do not share a long evolutionary history with invasive predators, they may lack defenses against them. This can lead to population...

Location and detailed explanation of the 20 landmarks digitized for estimating tadpole body shape.

Background / Purpose: Our previous work had revealed that tadpoles are able to compensate for a delay in hatching by shortening their larval period (1). In our study system, moor frogs (Rana arvalis) living in central Sweden, breeding occurs as soon as ponds thaw in early spring which carries the potential cost of freezing for recently laid clutc...

Organisms normally grow at a sub-maximal rate. After experiencing a period of arrested growth, individuals often show compensatory growth responses by modifying their life-history, behaviour and physiology. However, the strength of compensatory responses may vary across broad geographic scales as populations differ in their exposition to varying ti...

Seasonal time constraints can pose strong selection on life histories. Time-constrained animals should prioritise fast development over predation risk to avoid unfavourable growing conditions. However, changes in phenology could alter the balance between anti-predator and developmental needs. We studied variation of anti-predator strategies in comm...

1. As size is tightly associated with fitness, compensatory strategies for growth loss can be vital for restoring individual fitness. However, immediate and delayed costs of compensatory responses may prevent their generalization, and the optimal strategy may depend on environmental conditions. Compensatory responses may be particularly important i...

Chronic stress often affects growth and development negatively, and these effects are often mediated via glucocorticoid hormones, which elevate during stress. We investigated latitudinal variation in corticosterone (CORT) response to chronic predator stress in Rana temporaria tadpoles along a 1500-km latitudinal cline in Sweden tadpoles, in a labor...

In natural systems, organisms are frequently exposed to spatial and temporal variation in predation risk. Prey organisms are known to develop a wide array of plastic defences to avoid being eaten. If inducible plastic defences are costly, prey living under fluctuating predation risk should be strongly selected to develop reversible plastic traits a...

Long-distance migration is widespread among birds, connecting breeding and wintering areas through a set of stopover localities where individuals refuel and/or rest. The extent of the stopover is critical in determining the migratory strategy of a bird. Here, we examined the relationship between minimum length of stay of PVC-ringed birds in a major...

The capacity of populations to respond adaptively to environmental change is essential for their persistence. Isolated populations often harbour reduced genetic variation, which is predicted to decrease adaptive potential, and can be detrimental under the current scenarios of global change. In this study, we examined climatic adaptation in larval l...

In organisms with complex life cycles, environmentally induced plasticity across sequential stages can have important consequences on morphology and life history traits such as developmental and growth rates. However, previous research in amphibians and other ectothermic vertebrates suggests that some morphological traits are generally insensitive...

Environmental conditions experienced early in the ontogeny can have a strong impact on individual fitness and performance later in life. Organisms may counteract the negative effects of poor developmental conditions by developing compensatory responses in growth and development. However, previous studies on compensatory responses have largely ignor...

Understanding the factors driving departure decisions from stopover sites is critical when predicting the dynamics of bird migration. We Investigated the Interactive effects of wind, tidal characteristics, and precipitation on the departure decisions of the Eurasian Spoonbill Platalea l. leucorodia from a major coastal stopover locality in northern...

Variation in local environments may lead to variation in the selection pressures and differentiation among local populations even at microgeographic scale. We investigated variation in temperature-induced plasticity in larval life-history traits among populations of an isolated pool frog (Rana lessonae) metapopulation in Central Sweden. Successful...

Understanding the factors that affect the process of metamorphosis in species with complex life cycles, and in particular their variation within and among populations, has been rarely explored until recently. We examined the effects of temperature environment on several metamorphic characteristics in three populations of the pool frog (Rana lessona...

In animals with complex life cycles, the environment experienced early during the development may have strong effects on later performance and fitness. We investigated the intraspecific variation in the effects of larval temperature environment on the morphology and locomotory performance of juvenile pool frogs Rana lessonae originating from three...

The importance of sampling design for endangered population assesment. The case of the Storm petrel in Cantabria

The effect of intraspecific competition can be modified through the interaction with genetic relatedness among the competing individuals. Theory of kin selection predicts that organisms should modify their behaviour to increase the fitness of their relatives and consequently their inclusive fitness. However, in populations with low genetic variatio...

An update on the Storm Petrel (Hydrobates pelagicus) status in Cantabria

Amphibians are currently experiencing a severe worldwide decline. Several factors, such as habitat alteration, climate change, emerging diseases or the introduction of exotic species, have been signalled as being responsible for the reduction of amphibian populations. Among these, the introduction of fish predators has been repeatedly indicated as...

1. Some organisms under variable predator pressure show induced antipredator defences, whose development incurs costs and may be associated with changes to later performance. This may be of especial relevance to animals with complex life histories involving metamorphosis. 2. This study examines the effect of predation environment, experienced both...

For organisms with complex life cycles, hatching represents a crucial life history switch point that is often associated with high mortality rates due to predation. Not surpris- ingly, embryos and hatchlings of many species develop predator-induced behavioural and/or morphological responses to reduce the likelihood of mortality. Using laboratory ex...

For naive prey, the ability to recognize predators is advantageous at the time of first predator encounter. After predator detection, prey could avoid the risk of being eaten by modifying the patterns of activity and use of habitat. The use of refuges is considered one of the most widespread antipredator tactics. In laboratory experiments, we teste...

Predation on larval stages has been reported to play an important role in structuring amphibian communities, and for this reason the choice of suitable oviposition places is likely to influence newt fitness. In this study, we assessed whether females of four newt species - marbled newt (Triturus marmoratus), alpine newt (T. alpestris), palmate newt...

Most animals develop some kind of parental care in order to protect eggs or offspring from predation. Female newts (genus Triturus) protect eggs from predators by wrapping them individually in plant leaves. We studied oviposition characteristics of four newt species inhabiting the northern Iberian Peninsula (marbled newt, Triturus marmoratus; alpin...

We have analyzed the effect of introduced fish on amphibian assemblages in mountain lakes of the Cantabrian range (Asturias and Leon; northern Spain), by comparing amphibian species richness, abundance and diversity in lakes occupied by introduced fish and in those without fish. Amphibian species numbers were significantly lower in lakes inhabited...