José A. Hódar

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at University of Granada

Greenhouses are one of the most intensified agricultural production systems and where the impact of insect pests has been studied the most, yet there is little information on bird pests affecting crops grown under plastic. To uncover potential conflicts between birds and farmers in southeast Spain, where the highest concentration of greenhouses in...

Monitoring the distribution and size of long-living large shrubs, such as junipers, is crucial for assessing the long-term impacts of global change on high-mountain ecosystems. While deep learning models have shown remarkable success in object segmentation, adapting these models to detect shrub species with polymorphic nature remains challenging. I...

In gregarious insects, groups commonly originate from females laying eggs in masses and feeding groups are established as soon as larvae hatch. Some group‐living insect species may aggregate beyond the individual parent level, such that offspring from two or more egg masses develop within a common resource. Here we show that aggregative oviposition...

Changes in the distribution and abundance of animal populations and communities signal a clear response to environmental alterations. A number of changes in climateClimate and land use are taking place in the Sierra NevadaSierra Nevada, such as higher temperaturesTemperature and greater forest cover. In this chapter, we analyse the responses of ani...

Mistletoe-host systems exemplify an intimate and chronic relationship where mistletoes represent protracted stress for hosts, causing long-lasting impact. Although host changes in morphological and reproductive traits due to parasitism are well known, shifts in their physiological system, altering metabolite concentrations, are less known due to th...

Gradients in elevation impose changes in environmental conditions, which in turn modulate species distribution and abundance as well as the interactions they maintain. Along the gradient, interacting species (e.g., predators, parasitoids) can respond to changes in different ways. This study aims to investigate how egg parasitism of a forest pest, t...

The ability of plants to tolerate freezing limits their geographical distribution. Therefore, winter warming may shift a species’ occurrence northwards and/or to higher altitudes. In Europe, the hemiparasitic vascular plant Viscum album (mistletoe) has two common and widespread subspecies: V. a. ssp. album and V. a. ssp. austriacum. The former has...

• Forest canopies provide the initial physical and biological framework to secondary, dependent species, such as parasitic plants. In a Mediterranean pine forest, we have taxonomically and functionally characterised the entire arthropod community that interacts with mistletoe during its flowering period. • We hypothesise that a secondary foundation...

Appendix S1. Description of ecological context for thermal environment and floral market during the sampling period of the main study.

Appendix S2. Abundance (mean ± SE) of each taxonomic group of the arthropod community collected on pairs of pan traps (n=280 total pan traps) hanging on parasitized and unparasitized pine branches.

Appendix S3. Abundance (mean ± SE) of each taxonomic group of the arthropod communities visiting leaves and branches (foliar visitors) and flowers (floral visitors) on mistletoe plants (n =149 for each sampling) during their flowering period.

1. The colonisation of a new habitat by a community is led by deterministic and stochastic processes at different spatio‐temporal scales. Parasitic plants, such as mistletoe, represent a new habitat within forest canopy that is free to be colonised by many organisms. 2. This study investigates how ecological factors operating at forest and plant sc...

Field-collected data of "Ecological assembly rules on arthropod community inhabiting mistletoes" publication.

Abstract: The diversity of herbivorous insects may arise from colonization and subsequent specialization on different host plants. Such specialization requires changes in several insect traits, which may lead to host race formation if they reduce gene flow among populations that feed on different plants. Behavioural changes may play a relevant role...

Pine plantations, very common in the Mediterranean basin, are recurrently affected by forest pests due to intrinsic characteristics (high density, low spatial heterogeneity) and external factors (consistent trend towards a warmer and drier climate). INSTAR is an Agent-Based Model aiming to simulate the population dynamics of the Thaumetopoea pityoc...

This dataset provides information about infestation caused by the pine processionary moth (Thaumetopoea pityocampa ([Denis & Schiffermüller], 1775)) in pure or mixed pine woodlands and plantations in Andalusia. It represents a long-term series (1993-2015) containing 81,908 records that describe the occurrence and incidence of this species. Data wer...

Este documento expone los resultados de un muestreo intensivo durante el fin de semana del 1-2 de julio de 2017 en el PN Sierra de Baza (Granada), dentro de las actividades organizadas por la Asociación de Educación Ambiental El bosque Animado dentro del marco de actividades de Voluntariado Ambiental en áreas de la Red Natura 2000 financiadas por l...

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Indirect interactions emerge among a wide range of herbivores sharing the same plant resource. Consumers usually belong to different trophic guilds, from folivores and sapsuckers to parasitic plants. We propose that mistletoes parasitizing pines could play a key role acting as herbivores on host pines and coming indirectly into competition with oth...

Prolonged diapause occurs in a number of insects and is interpreted as a way to evade adverse conditions. The winter pine processionary moths (Thaumetopoea pityocampa and Th. wilkinsoni) are important pests of pines and cedars in the Mediterranean region. They are typically univoltine, with larvae feeding across the winter, pupating in spring in th...

Stress caused by parasitic plants, e.g. mistletoes, alters certain host-plant traits as a response. While several physical implications of the parasite-host relation have been well studied, shifts in the host chemical profile remain poorly understood. Here we compare the chemical profiles of mistletoe (Viscum album subsp. austriacum) leaves and hos...

Many studies have addressed several plant-insect interaction topics at nutritional, molecular, physiological, and evolutionary levels. However, it is still unknown how flexible the metabolism and the nutritional content of specialist insect herbivores feeding on different closely related plants can be. We performed elemental, stoichiometric, and me...

Appendix 1. Mean ± SE chemical compound amounts in previous-year (2011) and current-year (2012) needle cohorts from pines with 4 parasite load levels (Control, Low, Medium, and High)

Appendix 2. Representative gas chromatogram with numbered peaks according to compounds identified in pine needles (top) and mistletoe leaves extracts (bottom, inverted). Numbered peaks correspond to: 1) Tricyclene*, 2) α-Thujene, 3) α-Pinene, 4) Camphene, 5) Sabinene, 6) β-Pinene, 7) Myrcene, 8) Limonene, 9) β-Phellandrene*, 10) Ocimene, 11) Terpin...

Prolonged diapause occurs in a number of insects and is interpreted as a way to evade adverse conditions. The winter pine processionary moths ( Thaumetopoea pityocampa and Th. wilkinsoni ) are important pest of pines and cedars in the Mediterranean region. They are typically univoltine, with larvae feeding across the winter, pupating in spring in t...

Prolonged diapause occurs in a number of insects and is interpreted as a way to evade adverse conditions. The winter pine processionary moths ( Thaumetopoea pityocampa and Th. wilkinsoni ) are important pest of pines and cedars in the Mediterranean region. They are typically univoltine, with larvae feeding across the winter, pupating in spring in t...

• Key message Parasitism by mistletoe increases the cover and diversity of herbaceous vegetation under the host tree and attracts the activity of rabbits in comparison to control trees. Thus, the effects on forest community go beyond the parasitized tree. • Context Mistletoes are a diverse group of aerial hemiparasitic plants and are considered ke...

This document reports the species inventory found during the “Bioblitz” carried out at P.N. Sierra de Baza during July 2017. A total of 42 naturalists, belonging to 7 Spanish organizations and academic research groups, have contributed to the project. To be noted the participation of the informal group "Flying Dutch Orthoptera", formed by researche...

Las Albuferas de Adra forman parte de los humedales mejor conocidos a escala nacional en diversas disciplinas, como hidrogeología, limnología, ornitología, botánica, etnografía, historia y entomología acuática. No obstante, existe un gran vacío de información en lo que se refiere a entomofauna terrestre, a pesar de tratarse de uno de los principale...

Los daños que algunas especies de aves producen en los cultivos al aire libre están ampliamente estudiados. Sin embargo, poco se sabe sobre el perjuicio económico que éstas causan en las cosechas de los cultivos invernados, así como acerca de las medidas legales o ilegales usadas por los agricultores para paliar estos daños. Tras un amplio número d...

Actualmente, los cultivos intensivos bajo plástico ocupan 30.000 ha de superficie en la provincia de Almería. Siendo importante el deterioro ambiental y la pérdida de hábitat que ocasionan los invernaderos, poco se sabe sobre las aves que usan estos cultivos. Con el objetivo de caracterizar a la comunidad de aves que aprovecha este sistema agrícola...

Metabolomes, as chemical phenotypes of organisms, are likely not only shaped by the environment but also by common ancestry. If this is the case, we expect that closely related species of pines will tend to reach similar metabolomic solutions to the same environmental stressors. We examined the metabolomes of two sympatric subspecies of Pinus sylve...

Parasitic plants growing on tree branches may be a novel niche and phytoresource for arthropods. The spatial continuity between hosts and their parasites in canopies might provide a homogeneous environment for arthropod communities, but differences in mistletoe leaves and host needles could be exploited by different species of arthropods. Therefore...

Climate change, alteration of atmospheric composition, land abandonment in some areas and land use intensification in others, wildfires and biological invasions threaten forests, shrublands and pastures all over the world. However, the impacts of the combinations between global change factors are not well understood despite its pressing importance....

• Habitat selection is especially important for pupae of holometabolous insects because this stage is usually immobile and to a certain extent unable to react to environmental changes. In the present study, we analyze how habitat and soil moisture determine the fate of pupae of the pine processionary moth Thaumetopoea pityocampa, a defoliator pest...

Table S1. Parameters for processing LC‐MS chromatograms of the three pine species for both positive and negative ionization modes. Table S2. Retention time (RT) and mass‐to‐charge ratio (m/z) of the deconvoluted ions in both negative and positive ionization modes assigned to metabolites by MZmine v.2.12. Table S3. One‐way ANOVAs for each pine spe...

The debate whether the coevolution of plants and insects or macroevolutionary processes (phylogeny) is the main driver determining the arsenal of molecular defensive compounds of plants remains unresolved. Attacks by herbivorous insects affect not only the composition of defensive compounds in plants but also the entire metabolome. Metabolomes are...

1. As herbivory can modulate climate-induced shifts in species distribution, disentangling the relative importance of herbivory and climate on plant growth can help to predict and manage future changes in vegetation, such as those occurring at treeline areas. 2. An individual-based hierarchical Bayesian time-series model (Individual-Based Model; I...

The Northern pine processionary moth, Thaumetopoea pinivora (Treitschke, 1834) shows a highly scattered distribution with fragmented populations across Europe. A previous study exploring the postglacial history of T. pinivora defined it as a cold-tolerant relict species and concluded that a progressive reduction of suitable habitats after the postg...

This work describes a project intended to improve an essential aspect of student learning, i.e. writing essay tests, directed to students of the Undergraduate Degree in Biology at the University of Granada (Spain). Previous results indicate that most students are well prepared and understand most of the concepts basic to Biology, as reflected in th...

Plants respond locally and systemically to herbivore attack. Most of the research conducted on plant-herbivore relationships at elemental and molecular levels have focused on the elemental composition or/and certain molecular compounds or specific families of defensive metabolites showing that herbivores tend to select plant individuals or species...

Trees may react against defoliation by producing new tissues with modified morphological and nutritive characteristics, in order to prevent future herbivore attacks. In this work, we analyse the capacity of three pine species, namely cluster (Pinus pinaster), black (Pinus nigra) and Scots (Pinus sylvestris) pine, naturally set along an altitudinal...

The pine processionary moth is, by far, the most important insect defoliator of pine forests in Southern Europe and North Africa, both in terms of its temporal occurrence, geographic range and socioeconomic impact. Monitoring and pest management actions are therefore required on a regular basis, to ensure the detection, evaluation and mitigation of...

The pine processionary moth is, by far, the most important insect defoliator of pine forests in Southern Europe and North Africa, both in terms of its temporal occurrence, geographic range and socioeconomic impact. Monitoring and pest management actions are therefore required on a regular basis, to ensure the detection, evaluation and mitigation of...

Pine processionary moth, Thaumetopea pityocampa, is a model insect indicator of global warming, the northwards and upwards range expansion of this Mediterranean species being directly associated with the recent warming up. The knowledge about the drivers of moth expansion is synthesized. A first standardized mapping of the northern expansion edge,...

La partie est intégrée dans le Chapter 2: Natural history of the Processionary Moths (Thaumetopoea spp.): New insights in relation to climate change

Because of its peculiar biology, its negative impacts on forestry, and its urticating larvae affecting human and animal health, pine processionary moth has largely been studied in many European countries during the last century. However, knowledge remained scattered and no synthesis has ever been published. Moreover, the predictions sometimes appea...

Because of its peculiar biology, its negative impacts on forestry, and its urticating larvae affecting human and animal health, pine processionary moth has largely been studied in many European countries during the last century. However, knowledge remained scattered and no synthesis has ever been published. Since the IPCC retained the moth as one o...

Pine trees may show considerable variability in chemical composition in response to environmental conditions. Pine consumers, particularly herbivores and parasitic plants, can also promote pine chemical changes. For several pine species, the mistletoe (Viscum album subsp. austriacum) acts as a keystone species, taking a leading role on the modifica...

SOSTENIBILIDAD EN ESPAÑA 2011 327 l Observatorio de la Sostenibilidad de España (OSE) ha preparado el presente capítulo espe-cial sobre bosques, en el marco de su Informe Sostenibilidad en España 2011, con ocasión de la celebración del Año Internacional de los Bosques. La Asamblea General de Naciones Unidas acordó en 2006 celebrar en 2011 este impo...

Mediterranean pine forests are often attacked by caterpillars of Thaumetopoea pityocampa (Lep., Thaumetopoidae), one of the most important defoliators in the Mediterranean region causing large economic losses and ecological effects. The needle terpene concentrations and emissions may play a key role in the defense of pines. We studied two subspecie...

El proyecto MIGRAME tiene como objetivo estudiar la capacidad de migración altitudinal y de colonización de hábitats degradados de los robledales (Quercus pyrenaica) y enebrales (Juniperus communis) de Sierra Nevada en respuesta a dos motores asociados al cambio global: cambio climático y cambios de usos del territorio. En este contexto, planteamos...

Bush crickets (Orthoptera, Tettigoniidae) are known predators of egg batches of the pine processionary moth ( Thaumetopoea pityocampa Denis and Schiffermüller, Lepidoptera: Notodontidae), a severe pest in Mediterranean pine woodlands. Bush crickets have been proposed as biological control agents of T. pityocampa populations, although their characte...

Predicting climate-driven changes in plant distribution is crucial for biodiversity conservation and management under recent climate change. Climate warming is expected to induce movement of species upslope and towards higher latitudes. However, the mechanisms and physiological processes behind the altitudinal and latitudinal distribution range of...

Global change triggers shifts in forest composition, with warming and aridification being particularly threatening for the populations located at the rear edge of the species distributions. This is the case of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) in the Mediterranean Basin where uncertainties in relation to its dynamics under these changing scenarios are...

Histograms of frequencies of the plots belonging to the III Spanish National Forest Inventory with Pinus sylvestris as a dominant tree, according to their mean annual temperature and precipitation [35]. The grey bars show where our sampling sites belong (AR: Arcalís, VA: Valsaín; SN: Sierra Nevada). (DOCX)

Spearman correlation coefficients among the variables measured in the study plots (T: mean annual temperature; P: annual mean precipitation; GSF: global site factor; FI: potential fecundity index; BA: basal area). (DOCX)

Hay un acuerdo general en la comunidad científica respecto al efecto que el cambio climático va a significar para las especies plaga: la mayor parte de ellas se van a ver favorecidas, lo que augura un panorama difícil para la sostenibilidad y gestión de muchos de nuestros bosques. Usando como hilo conductor a la procesionaria del pino (Thaumetopoea...

Results of the generalized linear models accounting for the effects of winter NAO values for the present and the three previous winters on the percentage of pine woodland stands affected by PPM for all species and for the main five pine species using the subset of woodlands stands that had the whole time series between 1994 and 2009. Only the varia...

Herbivores can affect future forest composition by feeding selectivity. At temperature-sensitive treelines, herbivory can exacerbate or constrain climate-driven distributional shifts in tree species. This study analyses the impact of herbivory in a Mediterranean treeline of widespread Pinus sylvestris and P. nigra pinewoods, testing whether herbivo...

Many forest pest species strongly depend on temperature in their population dynamics, so that rising temperatures worldwide as a consequence of climatic change are leading to increased frequencies and intensities of insect-pest outbreaks. In the Mediterranean area, the climatic conditions are strongly linked to the effects of the North Atlantic Osc...

Insect pests are a major threat to many forests worldwide, from boreal to tropical forest ecosystems. Some pests exhibit periodical outbreaks, after which their populations often crash as a result of natural biological control. To offset such outbreaks, several management techniques are used, including aerial spraying of insecticides. The question...

Seed dispersal by Red fox (Vulpes vulpes), Stone marten (Martes foina), and Wild boar (Sus scrofa) was analyzed in an extensively degraded mosaic landscape in Sierra Nevada (SE Spain). The main objective was to determine whether seed dispersal by mammals was related to habitat degradation within a mosaic of adjacent degraded patches mixed with nati...

This study examines the consequences of adjacent elements for a given patch, through their effects on zoochorous dispersion by frugivorous birds. The case study consists of pine plantations (the focal patch) adjacent to other patches of native vegetation (mixed patches of native forest and shrublands), and/or pine plantations. Our hypothesis is tha...

Plants respond to herbivory in a variety of ways, including changes in their biochemical, physiological, and morphological characteristics. They are also strongly affected by light availability, which determines the carbon resources for growth as well as the synthesis of chemicals. Many studies have analyzed herbivory's effects on plants (Rosenthal...

There is an intense debate about the effects of postfire salvage logging versus nonintervention policies on regeneration of forest communities, but scant information from experimental studies is available. We manipulated a burned forest area on a Mediterranean mountain to experimentally analyze the effect of salvage logging on bird–species abundanc...

The domestic goat, a major herbivore in the Mediterranean basin, has demonstrated a strong ability to adapt its feeding behaviour to the chemical characteristics of food, selecting plants according to their nutritive quality. In this study, we determine some chemical characteristics related to plant nutritional quality and its variability among and...

This study analyses the biochemical diversity, under field conditions, of 10 important woody-plant species of south-eastern Spain, belonging to 7 families. We describe differences between species and between sites (two mountain ranges), as well as the seasonal variability of three chemical characteristics related to plant nutritional value (nitroge...

The role of herbivores in controlling plant population abundance and distribution is unclear. We experimentally determine the effect of damage by wild boars (Sus scrofa) in recruitment rate and spatial pattern of a Mediterranean tree, the holm oak (Quercus ilex). We monitored oak establishment in the Sierra Nevada of southeastern Spain during 4 yea...

Concepts concerning population and species are fundamental in Biology, both closely linked to genetics and ecology. From this perspective, it is advisable for genetics and ecology textbooks to offer an thorough picture of these concepts. However, a review of specialized handbooks offers a discouraging picture. We believe that accurate and informati...

Fluctuating asymmetry (FA), random nondirectional deviations from perfect symmetry, has been proposed as a useful indicator of environmental stress. Nevertheless, FA acts as a nonspecific indicator of stress; thus, factorial designs are needed to disentangle which of the factors may induce FA. We used an experimental approach in which seedlings of...

Question: Positive interactions are predicted to be common in communities developing under high physical stress or high herbivory pressure due to neighbour amelioration of limiting physical and consumer stresses, respectively. However, when both stress sources meet in the same community, the relative importance of the two facilitation mechanisms is...

Population is a keystone concept for many areas of Biology, namely genetics, ecology, all those that imply taxonomy (as botanic, zoology, microbiology...) or the new one of conservation biology. Its knowledge is also important in order to adequately understand and realise the evolution and its social implications in human history. Furthermore, it p...

This work presents two series of allometric regression equations for the estimation of arthropod body length and mass from recognizable remains in food samples of vertebrates. The utility of the equations is tested by analysing faeces from a reptile species Tarentola mauritanica. The application of these equations greatly increases the number of pr...

This study experimentally analyses the response to simulated herbivory of juvenile Scots pine of two different ages in contrasting abiotic scenarios, focusing on the potential dual role of browsing ungulates: negative, by removing aerial biomass, and positive, by stimulating compensation capacity and providing nutrients by depositing their excremen...

Aims: The study of the diet and prey selection of the Southern grey shrike. Location: Two shrubsteppes of South-eastern Spain. Methods: The diet is determined by pellet analysis, and then compared with samples of prey availability recorded by means of pitfall traps, on a monthly basis during an annual cycle. Results: The Southern grey shrike consum...

Question: How to improve reforestation success of Quercus pyrenaica. Location: 1800 m a.s.L, southern Spain. Methods: One-year-old Quercus pyrenaica seedlings were planted using two treatments: (1) bare soil, using a 30-cm diameter augur bit (conventional technique) and (2) under the canopy of a pioneer shrub, Salvia lavandulifolia, using a 12-cm d...

Spatial distribution of palatable and unpalatable plants can influence the foraging behaviour of herbivores, thereby changing plant-damage probabilities. Moreover, the immediate proximity to certain plants can benefit other plants that grow below them, where toxicity or spines act as a physical barrier or concealment against herbivores. This paper...

Predators, particularly those living in deserts, use two main foraging strategies, namely sit-and-wait or wide foraging. The Moorish gecko Tarentola mauritanica, a gecko frequently inhabiting humanized habitats, has been repeatedly classified as a sit-and-wait predator. However, previous data on dietary composition in natural habitats suggest a wid...

The diet of the blackwidow spider Latrodectus lilianae (Araneae: Theridiidae) was studied in an arid shrub-steppe of south-eastern Spain during 1990–93. For the first 3 years, prey mummies attached to spider webs were collected once the spiders' activity period was finished, at the end of September. In the fourth year, webs were marked and checked...

We performed an irrigation experiment to study the impact of summer drought on Pinus sylvestris establishment at its southernmost distribution limit. Watering was done during the first growing season simulating mesic summer conditions, and we monitored the consequences for survival and growth during the first growing season and the delayed conseque...

Se analiza la germinación de las semillas de pino silvestre en el limite sur de su distribución (Sierra Nevada) mediante experimentos de campo y de laboratorio en una muestra de diez microhábitats que representan la mayoría de los lugares en las que se encuentran las semillas tras la dispersión en estos bosques. En condiciones de laboratorio, las s...