Inigo Martinez-Solano

Spanish National Research Council | CSIC · Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales

Dispersal is a central process in ecology and evolution. It strongly influences the dynamics of spatially structured populations and affects evolutionary processes by shaping patterns of gene flow. For these reasons, dispersal has received considerable attention from ecologists, evolutionary biologists, and conservationists. Although it has been st...

The last species list of the European herpetofauna was published by Speybroeck, Beukema and Crochet (2010). In the meantime, ongoing research led to numerous taxonomic changes, including the discovery of new species-level lineages as well as reclassifications at genus level, requiring significant changes to this list. As of 2019, a new Taxonomic Co...

Natural populations often persist at the landscape scale as metapopulations, with breeding units (subpopulations) experiencing temporal extinction and recolonization events. Important parameters to forecast population viability in these systems include the ratio of the effective number of breeders (Nb) to the total number of adults (Na) and migrati...

In the face of worldwide amphibian declines, integrative studies combining individual‐based information and genetic data represent a powerful approach to produce robust, reliable and comparable assessments of demographic dynamics. The Iberian painted frog (Discoglossus galganoi) is endemic to Spain and Portugal and shows decreasing population trend...

Telomere shortening with age has been documented in many organisms, but few studies have reported telomere length measurements in amphibians, and no information is available for growth after metamorphosis, nor in wild populations. We provide both cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence of net telomere attrition with age in a wild amphibian popula...

In the face of habitat loss, preserving functional connectivity is essential to maintain genetic diversity and the demographic dynamics required for the viability of biotic communities. This requires knowledge of the dispersal behaviour of target species, which can be modelled as kernels, or probability density functions of dispersal distances at i...

Hybrid zones are geographic areas where individuals from distinct taxa meet, mate, and hybridize. These zones may have complex histories, but many of them originated relatively recently, during climatic oscillations in the Quaternary, following range shifts of formerly isolated, well-differentiated lineages. The Bufo bufo species group comprises fo...

The rich genetic and phenotypic diversity of species complexes is best recognized through formal taxonomic naming, but one must first assess the evolutionary history of phylogeographic lineages to identify and delimit candidate taxa. Using genomic markers, mitochondrial DNA barcoding and morphometric analyses, we examined lineage diversity and dist...

Context Functional connectivity across fragmented habitat patches is essential for the conservation of animal populations in humanized landscapes. Given their low dispersal capacity, amphibians in the Mediterranean region are threatened by habitat fragmentation and loss due to changes in land use, including agricultural intensification. Objectives...

Many herpetofauna species have been introduced outside of their native range. MtDNA barcoding is regularly used to determine the provenance of such populations. The alpine newt has been introduced across the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Ireland. However, geographical mtDNA structure across the natural range of the alpine newt is still incomp...

Assembling DNA barcode reference libraries for various taxonomic groups allows researchers to use metabarcoding or environmental DNA approaches to gain a rapid understanding of diversity in given environments. However, our ability to use reference libraries depends on how accurately DNA barcodes are able to recover taxonomic boundaries and identify...

The advent of genomic methods allows us to revisit the evolutionary history of organismal groups for which robust phylogenies are still lacking, particularly in species complexes that frequently hybridize. In this study, we conduct RAD-sequencing (RAD-seq) analyses of midwife toads (genus Alytes), an iconic group of western Mediterranean amphibians...

Planificar acciones de conservación para favorecer la persistencia de poblaciones de anfibios en ambientes cada vez más fragmentados y degradados requiere un conocimiento profundo de su biología. Sin embargo, el estado de conocimiento de las dinámicas poblacionales de la mayor parte de las especies ibéricas es escaso y fragmentario, y apenas existe...

Assessing patterns of functional connectivity among amphibian demes is crucial to unravel their population dynamics and prevent their isolation and eventual extinction. Integrative studies based on direct (capture-mark-recapture) and indirect (genetic) estimates of dispersal provide robust, biologically realistic inferences on population structure...

Los reptiles son animales poco conocidos pero que desempeñan funciones esenciales en los ecosistemas. Este libro presenta una visión general y actualizada de la diversidad y estado de conservación de los reptiles madrileños, una fauna diversa pero amenazada. El libro incluye fichas con fotografías y mapas de distribución de todas las especies, así...

Context Mediterranean wetland ecosystems are in continuous decline due to human pressure. Amphibians are key elements of biotic communities of Mediterranean temporary ponds and streams, and their persistence depends on the availability and inter-connectivity of breeding sites. Objectives We investigated the role of different factors potentially dr...

Context Robust assessment of functional connectivity in amphibian population networks is essential to address their global decline. The potential of graph theory to characterize connectivity among amphibian populations has already been confirmed, but the movement data on which modelled graphs rely are often scarce and inaccurate. While probabilisti...

Natural breeding sites for amphibians are decreasing in quantity and quality in temperate regions, resulting in local extinctions and increasing population fragmentation. Artificial water bodies (e.g., water tanks or cattle troughs) can represent suitable reproductive habitats for some amphibians, but demographic data are required to assess this as...

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...

Aim: The contributions of historical biogeography, morphology and climatic niche evolution in shaping species diversification have been typically examined separately. To fill this gap, we assessed the relative role of geologic history, environment and phenotypic trait evolution in lineage diversification of green lizards in the Mediterranean biodiv...

Comparative studies of mortality in the wild are necessary to understand the evolution of aging; yet, ectothermic tetrapods are underrepresented in this comparative landscape, despite their suitability for testing evolutionary hypotheses. We present a study of aging rates and longevity across wild tetrapod ectotherms, using data from 107 population...

Adaptive genetic diversity is a key factor in conservation planning as it relates to the evolutionary potential of populations and their responses to environmental change. Developments in landscape genomics have fostered a proliferation of tests for selection that aim to identify candidate adaptive markers in natural populations. However, these tes...

Sex-related differences in mortality are widespread in the animal kingdom. Although studies have shown that sex determination systems might drive lifespan evolution, sex chromosome influences on aging rates have not been investigated so far, likely due to an apparent lack of demographic data from clades including both XY (with heterogametic males)...

Investigation of the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms governing the origin and diversification of species requires integrative approaches that often have to accommodate strong discordance among datasets. A common source of conflict is the combination of morphological and molecular characters with different evolutionary rates. Resolution of th...

Agricultural intensification has been associated with biodiversity declines, habitat fragmentation and loss in a number of organisms. Given the prevalence of this process, there is a need for studies clarifying the effects of changes in agricultural practices on local biological communities; for instance, the transformation of traditional rainfed a...

Reproductive isolation is instrumental to the formation of new species (speciation), but it remains largely enigmatic how many incompatibilities are required to prevent hybridization and where they lie across the genome. By studying patterns of admixture in amphibian hybrid zones, we found that reproductive isolation is initiated by numerous small-...

Proteins encoded by Antigen Processing Genes (APGs) provide MHC class I (MHC-I) with antigenic peptides. In mammals, polymorphic multigenic MHC-I family is served by monomorphic APGs, whereas in certain non-mammalian species both MHC-I and APGs are polymorphic and coevolve within stable haplotypes. Coevolution was suggested as an ancestral gnathost...

The phylogeography and molecular taxonomy of the Alpine newt, Ichthyosaura alpestris, has been intensively studied in the past. However, previous studies did not include a comprehensive sampling from the Carpathian Basin, possibly a key region in the evolution of the species. We used a 1251 bp long fragment of the mitochondrial genome to infer the...

Understanding demographic dynamics and functional connectivity among demes is essential to prevent, identify and reverse amphibian population declines. Attempts to characterize connectivity among amphibian populations have largely relied on the use of molecular markers to assess patterns of genetic structure at the landscape scale and identify fact...

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...

Genetic diversity feeds the evolutionary process and allows populations to adapt to environmental changes. However, we still lack a thorough understanding of why hotspots of genetic diversity are so 'hot'. Here, we analysed the relative contribution of bioclimatic stability and genetic admixture between divergent lineages in shaping spatial pattern...

IUCN Assessment

IUCN assessment report of the North African Green Frog, Pelophylax saharicus

IUCN assessment report of the Moorish Toad, Sclerophrys mauritanica

Investigation of the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms governing the origin and diversification of species requires integrative approaches that often have to accommodate strong discordance among datasets. A common source of conflict is the combination of morphological and molecular characters with different evolutionary rates. Resolution of th...

The salamander genus Salamandra is widespread across Europe, North Africa, and the Near East and is renowned for its conspicuous and polymorphic colouration and diversity of reproductive modes. The phylogenetic relationships within the genus, and especially among the highly polymorphic species S. salamandra, have been very challenging to elucidate,...

Using a panel of 31 diagnostic nuclear SNP markers in 56 toad populations from the southern Alps and the northern and central Apennines, we document that the range of the spined toad, Bufo spinosus, extends along the Mediterranean coast from France into the northwest of Italy. This species, and the common toad B. bufo, engage in a unimodal hybrid z...

Reduced representation genome sequencing has popularized the application of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to address evolutionary and conservation questions in nonmodel organisms. Patterns of genetic structure and diversity based on SNPs often diverge from those obtained with microsatellites to different degrees, but few studies have expli...

Protected area systems should conserve intra‐specific genetic diversity. Since genetic data require resources to obtain, several approaches have been proposed for generating plans for protected area systems (prioritizations) when genetic data are not available. Yet such surrogate‐based approaches remain poorly tested. We evaluated the effectiveness...

Protected area systems should ideally maintain adaptive and neutral evolutionary processes. To achieve this, plans for expanding protected area systems (prioritizations) can improve coverage of related attributes (evolutionary attributes). However, long‐standing challenges in mapping and operationalizing evolutionary attributes have prevented their...

Amphibians in rural landscapes often utilize various types of artificial constructions originally designed for irrigation, livestock supply, or other purposes (e.g., water tanks or cattle troughs) as breeding sites. These sites potentially function as local refugia; however, their importance for amphibian communities has yet to be widely assessed....

The interplay between intrinsic (development, physiology, behavior) and extrinsic (landscape features, climate) factors determines the outcome of admixture processes in hybrid zones, in a continuum from complete genetic merger to full reproductive isolation. Here we assess the role of environmental correlates in shaping admixture patterns in the lo...

The designation of taxonomic units has important implications for the understanding and conservation of biodiversity. Eurasian vipers are a monophyletic group of viperid snakes (Serpentes, Viperinae), currently comprising four genera (Daboia, Macrovipera, Montivipera and Vipera) and up to 40 species. Taxonomic units have been described using a wide...

Molecular ecologists often rely on phylogenetic evidence for assessing the species-level systematics of newly-discovered lineages. Alternatively, the extent of introgression at phylogeographic transitions can provide a more direct test to assign candidate taxa into subspecies or species categories. Here we compared phylogenetic versus hybrid zone a...

Subdivided Pleistocene glacial refugia, best known as “refugia within refugia”, provided opportunities for diverging populations to evolve into incipient species and/or to hybridize and merge following range shifts tracking the climatic fluctuations, potentially promoting extensive cytonuclear discordances and “ghost” mtDNA lineages. Here we tested...

While estimates of genetic divergence are increasingly used in molecular taxonomy, hybrid zone analyses can provide decisive evidence for evaluating candidate species. Applying a population genomic approach (RAD-sequencing) to a fine-scale transect sampling, we analyzed the transition between two Iberian subspecies of the common midwife toad (Alyte...

El albinismo es una de las anomalías pigmentarias más documentadas en los anfibios, aunque en poblaciones naturales se da con poca frecuencia, posiblemente porque los animales con fenotipos albinos presentarían tasas de supervivencia menores que aquellos con fenotipo normal. En esta nota describimos una observación de una hembra adulta albina de ga...

Monfragüe National Park (Cáceres, Extremadura, Spain) is a protected area in central-western Iberia,including some of the best preserved primary Mediterranean vegetation. Legal protection dates back to 1979 (first as a Natural Park and then as a National Park), but knowledge about its reptile communities is so far limited to sparse records. In this...

The study of natural hybrid zones can illuminate aspects of lineage divergence and speciation in morphologically cryptic taxa. We studied a hybrid zone between two highly divergent but morphologically similar lineages (Southwestern and Southeastern) of the Iberian endemic Bosca's newt (Lissotriton boscai) in SW Iberia with a multilocus dataset (mic...

The interplay between intrinsic (development, physiology, behavior) and extrinsic (landscape features, climate) factors determines the outcome of admixture processes in hybrid zones, in a continuum from complete genetic merger to full reproductive isolation. Here we assess the role of environmental correlates in shaping admixture patterns in the lo...

Piedra, cantera, granito. Son las palabras que nos vienen a la mente cuando hablamos de Alpedrete. La extracción del granito transformó el paisaje formando centenares de heridas en la piedra, que, sin pretenderlo, se convirtieron en ricos ecosistemas. Estos espacios singulares fueron colonizados poco a poco por diferentes plantas y animales. Unos d...

Cambridge Core - Natural Resource Management, Agriculture, Horticulture and forestry - Rewilding - edited by Nathalie Pettorelli

Aim: To reconstruct the historical biogeography of Hyla molleri, a tree frog endemic to the Eurosiberian and Mediterranean bioclimatic zones in the Iberian Peninsula. Location: Iberian Peninsula. Methods: We used molecular data (mtDNA and species‐specific, polymorphic microsatellite loci) and species distribution modelling (SDM) from the Last Int...

La siguiente lista patrón tiene como base la primera lista patrón: MONTORI, A.; LLORENTE, G. A.; ALONSO-ZARAZAGA, M. A.; ARRIBAS, O.; AYLLÓN, E.; BOSCH, J.; CARRANZA, S.; CARRETERO, M. A.; GALÁN, P.; GARCÍA-PARÍS, M.; HARRIS, D. J.; LLUCH, J.; MÁRQUEZ, R.; MATEO, J. A.; NAVARRO, P.; ORTIZ, M.; PÉREZ-MELLADO, V.; PLEGUEZUELOS, J. M.; ROCA, V.; SANTO...

Examining historical and contemporary processes underlying current patterns of genetic variation is key to reconstruct the evolutionary history of species and implement conservation measures promoting their long-term persistence. Combining phylogeographic and landscape genetic approaches can provide valuable insights, especially in regions harborin...

Dispersal is a central process in ecology and evolution. It strongly influences the dynamics of spatially structured populations, by affecting population growth rate and local colonization-extinction processes. Dispersal can also influence evolutionary processes because it determines rates and patterns of gene flow in spatially structured populatio...

Dispersal is a central process in ecology and evolution. It strongly influences the dynamics of spatially structured populations, by affecting population growth rate and local colonization-extinction processes. Dispersal can also influence evolutionary processes because it determines rates and patterns of gene flow in spatially structured populatio...

The canonical model of sex-chromosome evolution predicts that, as recombination is suppressed along sex chromosomes, gametologs will progressively differentiate, eventually becoming heteromorphic. However, there are numerous examples of homomorphic sex chromosomes across the tree of life. This homomorphy has been suggested to result from frequent s...

Aim Understanding the roles of allopatric fragmentation and niche divergence in intraspecific lineage diversification is central to our comprehension of how new species arise and evolve. Here we integrate an extensive multilocus dataset with species distribution models to address these topics in genetically differentiated population lineages of the...

Many biodiversity hotspots are located in areas with a complex geological history, like Southeast Asia, where species diversity may still be far underestimated, especially in morphologically conservative groups like amphibians. Recent phylogenetic studies on the frog genus Leptobrachium from Southeast Asia revealed the presence of deeply divergent...

Aim To test the role of mountains as barriers to gene flow in co‐distributed taxa with different life history traits. Location Sierra de Guadarrama, Central Spain. Methods We used larval genotypes of four amphibian species ( Epidalea calamita , Hyla molleri , Pelophylax perezi and Pelobates cultripes ) sampled on northern and southern slopes of S...

The three species of banded newt (genus Ommatotriton) are endemic to the Near East. Recently an introduced banded newt population was discovered in Catalonia, Spain. To determine the species involved and the geographical source, we genotyped 11 individuals for one mitochondrial and two nuclear genetic markers, and compared the observed haplotypes t...

We document the distribution of the common toad Bufo bufo and the spined toad B. spinosus at their contact zone across France with data from a mitochondrial DNA RFLP assay, complementing similar work including nuclear markers in the northwest and southeast of France and in Italy. We also reconstruct geographical clines across the species’ contact z...

The ratio of the effective number of breeders (Nb) to the adult census size (Na), Nb/Na, approximates the departure from the standard capacity of a population to maintain genetic diversity in one reproductive season. This information is relevant for assessing population status, understanding evolutionary processes operating at local scales, and unr...