Joana Boavida-Portugal

Universidade de Évora | uevora

The knowledge about the capacity of organisms' early life stages to adapt to elevated temperatures is very limited but crucial to understand how marine biota will respond to global warming. Here we provide a comprehensive and integrated view of biological responses to future warming during the early ontogeny of a keystone invertebrate, the squid Lo...

Loligo vulgaris is the most abundant and commercially important species of squid in Portuguese waters. The species presents a complex population structure due to a short life-cycle, highly variable growth rates and a long spawning period. The latter characteristics combined with the marked seasonality of the Portuguese coast results in individuals...

The European squid, Loligo vulgaris (Lamarck, 1798), is one of the most common squids along the north-eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts. This species has a vast distribution area occupying the coastal fringe of the eastern Atlantic roughly from 55ºN to 20ºS. It presents a high geographic variability of reproductive and growth parameters, wi...

Coastal lobsters support important fisheries all over the world, but there is evidence that climate-induced changes may jeopardize some stocks. Here we present the first global forecasts of changes in coastal lobster species distribution under climate change, using an ensemble of ecological niche models (ENMs). Global changes in richness were proje...

Coastal marine ecosystems are currently being exposed to climate change at a much faster rate than many other ecosystems, with coastal species being exposed to multiple stressors. Cephalopod mollusks play a pivotal role in marine trophic webs, and most are “keystone” species due to their influence on ecosystem dynamics. In this study, we characteri...

This work aims to present an historical review of the ecosystem services provided by anadromous fish (i.e., species that migrate from the sea to the river to spawn) throughout Human time, as well as of the main related threats, focusing on the Iberian Peninsula region. Anadromous fish provide important provision, cultural, regulatory and supporting...

The threespine stickleback is a freshwater fish listed as endangered in Portugal, near the southern limit of the species global distribution. However, few measures have been proposed aiming at the conservation of this species in suboptimal environments. From existing databases and specific sampling campaigns, we obtained occurrence data of threespi...

Using remotely sensed data to estimate the biophysical properties of vegetation in woodlands is a challenging task due to their heterogeneous nature. The objective of this study was to assess the biophysical parameters of different vegetation types (cork oak trees, shrubs and herbaceous vegetation) in cork oak woodland through the analysis of tempo...

All reflectance measurements have been collected in Mediterranean oak woodland at Herdade da Machoqueira do Grou, located in Central Portugal (39° 08′ 18.9″ N, 9° 19′ 56.22″ W, 165-m height). The site is characterized by a Mediterranean climate with mild winters and hot dry summers. The average annual precipitation recorded at the climate station o...

Monitoring vegetation is extremely relevant in the context of climate change, and digital repeat photography is a method that has gained momentum due to a low cost–benefit ratio. This work aims to demonstrate the possibility of using digital cameras instead of field spectroradiometers (FS) to track understory vegetation phenology in Mediterranean c...

Little is known about the capacity of early life stages to undergo hypercapnic and thermal acclimation under the future scenarios of ocean acidification and warming. Here, we investigated a comprehensive set of biological responses to these climate change-related variables (2°C above winter and summer average spawning temperatures and ΔpH=0.5 units...

The combined effects of future ocean acidification and global warming on the hypoxia thresholds of marine biota are, to date, poorly known. Here, we show that the future warming and acidification scenario led to shorter embryonic periods, lower survival rates and the enhancement of premature hatching in the cuttlefish Sepia officinalis. Routine met...

The impact of a realistic warming scenario on the metabolic physiology of early cephalopod (squid Loligo vulgaris and cuttlefish Sepia officinalis) life stages was investigated. During exposure to the warming conditions (19ºC for the western coast of Portugal in 2100), the increase in oxygen consumption rates throughout embryogenesis was much steep...

The aim of this study was to examine the depth-related changes in the diversity of decapod crustaceans from the intertidal to abyssal zones off Madeira Archipelago, a chain of islands in the subtropical North East Atlantic Ocean. The bathymetric gradient in species richness was evaluated using the reported ranges of 175 out of approximately 186 dec...