Jose Oteros

University of Cordoba (Spain) | UCO · Department of Botany, Ecology and Plant Physiology

Pollen are monitored in Europe by a network of about 400 pollen traps, all operated manually. To date, automated pollen monitoring has only been feasible in areas with limited variability in pollen species. There is a need for rapid reporting of airborne pollen as well as for alleviating the workload of manual operation. We report our experience wi...

Background: Endotoxin (lipopolysaccharides, LPS) released from Gram-negative bacteria causes strong immunologic and inflammatory effects and when airborne may contribute to respiratory conditions such as allergic asthma. Objectives: To identify the source of airborne endotoxin and the effect of this endotoxin on allergic sensitization. Methods:...

1.Aerobiological databases are constantly increasing. Many of them contain long and extensive time series of data which are very difficult and tedious to manage. 2.The development of new real‐time automatic sampling devices also requires new tools to reduce time of calculations and data management. In this sense, the “AeRobiology” R package has bee...

There is high demand for online, real-time and high-quality pollen data. To the moment pollen monitoring has been done manually by highly specialized experts. Here we evaluate the electronic Pollen Information Network (ePIN) comprising 8 automatic BAA500 pollen monitors in Bavaria, Germany. Automatic BAA500 and manual Hirst-type pollen traps were r...

To benefit allergy patients and the medical practitioners, pollen information should be available in both a reliable and timely manner; the latter is only recently possible due to automatic monitoring. To evaluate the performance of all currently available automatic instruments, an international intercomparison campaign was jointly organised by the...

Paper mulberry pollens are known to trigger severe allergies that can also cause asthma exacerbations. In Islamabad, the paper mulberry pollen concentrations are thought to peak between the 10th and 31st of March each year, depending on the weather in the preceding months. However, more accurate prediction of high pollen days would allow patients t...

COVID-19 lockdown measures have impacted the environment with both positive and negative effects. However, how human populations have perceived such changes in the natural environment and how they may have changed their daily habits have not been yet thoroughly evaluated. The objectives of this work were to investigate (1) the social perception of...

The flowering period of plants is a critical time since it determines their reproductive success. Flowering is controlled by different factors including genetic regulation and environmental conditions. In the Mediterranean area, favourable conditions usually occur in spring, when most plant species flower including those of the Mediterranean Quercu...

Sandy beaches are the preferred nesting habitat for sea turtles. Multiple climate change events may, however, impact on this habitat, since the projected increase in the intensity and frequency of high tides as a consequence of rises in sea level and storm events may cause a higher rate of flooding of nests. Knowledge regarding future scenarios of...

Pollen respiratory allergies have been increasing in prevalence over the last two decades, partly as the result of the impact of climate change. For many allergenic trees, grass and weed species, increased pollen production and prolonged pollination period result in long-term increased abundance of pollen allergens in the atmosphere; earlier shifts...

The drivers affecting the Pollen Allergen Potency (PAP, amount of allergen released per pollen) are sparsely known. Betula and Poaceae airborne pollen are the two main allergenic pollen in the World. Airborne pollen and their allergens Bet v 1 and Phl p 5 were simultaneously measured from 2010 to 2015 in Davos (Switzerland) and Munich (Germany) by...

Airborne pollen concentration varies depending on several factors, such as local plant biodiversity, geography and climatology. These particles are involved in triggering pollinosis in a share of worldwide human population, and adequate monitoring is, therefore, important. However, the pollen traps in aerobiological monitoring networks are usually...

Meteorological conditions and the distribution of pollen sources are the two most decisive factors influencing the concentration of airborne grass pollen. However, knowledge about land-use types, their potential pollen emission, and the importance of local sources remains limited. In this study, wild grass pollen concentrations from 27 stations in...

Alternaria conidia have high allergenic potential and they can trigger important respiratory diseases. Due to that and to their extensive detection period, airborne Alternaria spores are considered as a relevant airborne allergenic particle. Several studies have been developed in order to predict the human exposure to this aeroallergen and to preve...

The content for this preprint is already published as peer reviewed article with this DOI: 10.1016/j.envres.2022.113987

Climate change impacts on the structure and function of ecosystems will worsen public health issues like allergic diseases. Birch trees (Betula spp.) are important sources of aeroallergens in Central and Northern Europe. Birches are vulnerable to climate change as these trees are sensitive to increased temperatures and summer droughts. This study a...

Long-term trends of atmospheric Quercus pollen recorded for 25 years (1995-2019) in southern Spain (Cordoba city, Andalusia region) have been studied to determine the influence of climate fluctuations and other anthropogenic factors on Mediterranean oak vegetation areas. Atmospheric pollen analysis revealed different changes on reproductive Quercus...

A Correction to this paper has been published: 10.1007/s11356-021-14749-x

This study presents the results of a Europe-wide training and Quality Control (QC) exercise carried out within the framework of the European Aerobiology Society’s QC Working Group. The main aim of this exercise was to examine the feasibility of carrying out a QC exercise for fungal spore monitoring in Europe, using a similar methodology to the one...

Missing data is a common problem in scientific research. The availability of extensive environmental time series is usually laborious and difficult, and sometimes unexpected failures are not detected until samples are processed. Consequently, environmental databases frequently have some gaps with missing data in it. Applying an interpolation method...

Significance Coexposure to airborne pollen enhances susceptibility to respiratory viral infections, regardless of the allergy status. We hypothesized this could be also true for SARS-CoV-2 infections. To investigate this, we tested for relationships between SARS-CoV-2 infection rates and pollen concentrations, along with humidity, temperature, popu...

Climate change affects the reproductive life cycles of plants, including pollen production, which has consequences for allergic respiratory diseases. We examined climatic trends at eight locations in Bavaria, Southern Germany, with pollen time series of at least 10 years (up to 30 years in Munich). Climate change in Bavaria was characterized by a r...

Teacher-training programs around the world, and especially in Europe do not specify in detail the capacities that future professionals should acquire, so it brings about a great discussion among educators, researchers and teachers. The main objective of this study is to know and evaluate the level of competence development acquired by future Second...

Cumulative data indicate that pollen grains and air pollution reciprocally interact. Climate changes seem also to influence pollen allergenicity. Depending on the plant species and on the pollutant type and concentration, this interaction may modify the features and metabolism of the pollen grain. Previous results revealed a significant positive co...

Biological pollution directly affects our health and quality of life. In urban areas, people spend most time in indoor environments including means of transports where can be exposed to pollution sick building syndrome. Despite the importance of this issue, studies on the biological particles exposure in indoor transports are scarce and poorly docu...

Research Highlights: This paper compares the thermal requirements in three different olive-growing areas in the Mediterranean region (Toledo, central Spain; Lecce, southeastern Italy; Chaal, central Tunisia). A statistical method using a partial least square regression for daily temperatures has been applied to study the chilling and heat requireme...

The effects of climate change on agricultural systems raise important uncertainties about the future productivity and suitability of crops, especially in areas suffering from intense environmental changes. Olive groves occupy Mediterranean areas characterized by seasonal temporary droughts, which cause this cultivation to be highly dependent on loc...

Mobile Health (mHealth) uses mobile communication devices such as smartphones and tablet computers to support and improve health‐related services, data flow and information, patient self‐management, surveillance, and disease management from the moment of first diagnosis to an optimized treatment. The European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunol...

Bioinformatics clustering application for mining of a large set of olive pollen aerobiological data to describe the daily distribution of Olea pollen concentration. The study was performed with hourly pollen concentrations measured during 8 years (2011–2018) in Extremadura (Spain). Olea pollen season by quartiles of the pollen integral in preseason...

THIS IS NOT A PEER REVIEWED PUBLICATION, AND IT WILL NOT BE IN THIS STATE. DO NOT TAKE WRONG CONCLUSIONS WITHOUT EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCES. IT IS AN HYPOTHESIS AND IT MUST BE TESTED BEFORE ACCEPTING OR REJECTING IT. COVID-19 is the pandemic of the 21st century. It is known to be spread by infectious aerosols produced when speak, cough, breathe or sne...

Assessing the pathways by which alien species are introduced is essential if we are to identify potential risks and evaluate management decisions. Intentional introductions are responsible for the introductions of millions of animals throughout Latin America. We explore: (1) the relative role of several intentional introduction pathways (hunting, f...

https://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(19)31763-4/fulltext

Airborne pollen concentrations vary depending on the location of the pollen trap with respect to the pollen sources. Two Hirst-type pollen traps were analyzed within the city of Munich (Germany): one trap was located 2 m above ground level (AGL) and the other one at rooftop (35 m AGL), 4.2 km apart. In general, 1.4 ± 0.5 times higher pollen amounts...

In a context of the growing concern about the impact of biological invasions, our objective is to review the role of those non-native species that have primarily been introduced for angling purposes in at least one European country. We are particularly interested in: (1) the relative role of sport fish species in the context of non-native species i...

Thunderstorm asthma has been reported after unusually high co-occurrence of asthma cases with thunderstorm events. To date, no determinative relationship among involved co-factors has been revealed worldwide. Very few times it has been examined within a data-oriented framework and or for the full diversity spectrum of aeroallergens (pollen, fungal...

These data were originated during 2015 by ZAUM. In the framework of ePIN testnetz project, only the stations managed by ZAUM. They correspond to daily pollen concentrations of a network of 20 Hirst pollen traps across Bavaria (excluding the station DEERLA). The network operated from the end of February until the end of September 2015. All traps wer...

Daily fluctuations of the airborne pollen concentrations produce variations on symptomatology in allergic population. Such fluctuations are influenced by local vegetal coverage, flowering phenology, geography and climatology. Since 1991, airborne pollen of Malaga province (southern Spain) has been monitored in 7 different locations. Malaga station...

From an allergological point of view, Poaceae pollen is one of the most important types of pollen that the population is exposed to in the ambient environment. There are several studies on intra-diurnal patterns in grass pollen concentrations and agreement on the high variability. However, the method for analysing the different patterns is not yet...

Airborne pollen is a recognized biological indicator and its monitoring has multiple uses such as providing a tool for allergy diagnosis and prevention. There is a knowledge gap related to the distribution of pollen traps needed to achieve representative biomonitoring in a region. The aim of this manuscript is to suggest a method for setting up a p...

Betula pollen is frequently found in the atmosphere of central and northern Europe. Betula pollen are health relevant as they cause severe allergic reactions in the population. We developed models of thermal requirements to predict start, peak and end dates of the Betula main pollen season for Bavaria (Germany). Betula pollen data of one season fro...

The effect of height on pollen concentration is not well documented and little is known about the near-ground vertical profile of airborne pollen. This is important as most measuring stations are on roofs, but patient exposure is at ground level. Our study used a big data approach to estimate the near-ground vertical profile of pollen concentration...

We present an abbreviated method for conducting large scale quality control (QC) exercises over limited time periods, which was used for examining the proficiency of technicians involved in the electronic Pollen Information Network (ePIN). The goal was for technicians to have their analysis skills evaluated at least twice: (1) by having at least on...

Weber A, Mertes H, Steckling-Muschack N, Schutzmeier P, Kutzora S, Damialis A, Kabesch M, Traidl-Hoffmann C, Bergmann K, Böse-O'Reilly S, Nowak D, Oteros J, Buters J, Herr C, Heinze S. Elektronisches Polleninformationsnetzwerk in Bayern (ePIN) und systematischer Literaturreview zu symptom-relevanten Konzentrationen von aerogenen Pollen (LuPo). Gesu...

Background: Pollen is naturally emitted but it is also considered as an anthropogenic pollutant. Pollen concentrations are relevant for health, crop sciences and monitoring climate change, among others. Nevertheless, pollen is often insufficiently monitored resulting in a lack of data. Thus, modelling of pollen concentrations for unmonitored areas...

R package "AeRobiology". Different tools for managing aeriobiological databases, elaborating the main calculations and visualization of results. In a first step, data are checked using tools for quality control and all missing gaps are completed. Then, the main parameters of the pollen season are calculated and represented graphically. Multiple gra...

Although pollen allergy is the most frequent allergic disease in countries with a western life style (1), knowing “the enemy” i.e. the current pollen exposure, is still a neglected scientific topic. This is remarkable, as pollen levels predict allergy symptoms in allergic individuals (2). In addition, higher pollen exposure results in more allergic...

Background: The effect of environmental factors on allergic sensitizations is still unclear. Rural areas versus cities have different exposure levels to pollutants and aeroallergens. These differences could give clues on the causes of higher allergic sensitization rates in children exposed to city air. Method: Two studies with children aged 5 years...

Background: Airborne pollen and fungal spores are major causes of respiratory allergy worldwide. Although pollen has been extensively studied, still little is known about fungi. What are the environmental factors affecting fungal abundance? Is there a ‘safe’ place or time-period that we can ‘switch off’ fungal exposure and allergies? To answer thes...

This research reports the phenological trends of four early spring and late winter flowering trees in Spain (south Europe) from a recent period (1986–2012). The studied species were deciduous trees growing in different climatic areas: hazel (Corylus avellana L.), willow (Salix alba L.), ash (Fraxinus angustifolia Vahl.) and white mulberry (Morus al...

Abstract Background Ambient air quality monitoring is a governmental duty that is widely carried out in order to detect non-biological (“chemical”) components in ambient air, such as particles of 500). The prevalent monitoring method is based on the Hirst principle (> 600 stations). The inventory is visualised as an interactive and on-line map. It...

The incidence of allergic diseases is increasing worlwide. However, the factors controling allergenicity are still not well understood, making life hard for physicians in their diagnosis and treatment. The influence of lifestyle and Climate Change were reported as factors that drive allergic sensitization. Nonetheless, studies are lacking that corr...

Standardisation of methods of pollen monitoring networks is vital for data quality. In pollen monitoring networks in Europe, the Hirst-type trap is standard. Hirst traps are calibrated with handheld rotameters. We detected a systematic error in the flow rate calibrated by these standard handheld rotameters. We measured the flow rate of 19 Hirst tra...

Tunisia is the world’s second largest olive oil-producing region after the European Union. This paper reports on the use of models to forecast local olive crops, using data for Tunisia’s five main olive-producing areas: Mornag, Jemmel, Menzel Mhiri, Chaal, and Zarzis. Airborne pollen counts were monitored over the period 1993–2011 using a Cour trap...

Airborne bio-aerosol content (mainly pollen and spores) depends on the surrounding vegetation and weather conditions, particularly wind direction. In order to understand this issue, maps of the main land cover in influence areas of 10 km in radius surrounding pollen traps were created. Atmospheric content of the most abundant 14 pollen types was...

Mapping pollen concentrations is of great interest to study the health impact and ecological implications or for forestry or agronomical purposes. A deep knowledge about factors affecting airborne pollen is essential for predicting and understanding its dynamics. The present work sought to predict annual Quercus pollen over the Castilla and León re...

Understanding how the diversity of invasive species is geographically distributed and identifying the major drivers of that pattern is a relevant challenge as regards invasion biology. The aim of this paper was, therefore, to identify and characterize those areas colonized by a high number of alien species as a means to provide directional indicati...

Pollen monitoring is mostly performed manually. There is, however, a need for rapid reporting of pollen counts in addition to the alleviation of the workload of manual operation. We investigated the different steps needed for building an automatic pollen monitoring network in Bavaria, Germany. First, we tested the performance of the automatic polle...