Luis M. Carrascal

Spanish National Research Council | CSIC

Animal pigmentation has evolved because of several adaptive functions. In the case of pigmentation produced by melanins, the most common pigments in animals, the main function is protection against UV radiation. However, pigmentation also affects animal surface's ability to absorb solar radiation and gain heat, which may represent a thermal constra...

Infectious disease and climate change are considered major threats to biodiversity and act as drivers behind the global amphibian decline. This is to a large extent based on short term studies that are designed to detect the immediate and strongest biodiversity responses to a threatening process. What few long term studies are available, although t...

Aim While the contribution of abiotic factors to species distribution is well known, the geographic structure, if any, of biotic interactions within the species range is poorly understood. Most studies neglect biotic interactions when generating Species Distribution Models (SDMs) and projecting them, using future climatic scenarios, while others ar...

The Gran Canaria Blue Chaffinch Fringilla polatzeki is a threatened, endemic, forest‐dwelling bird species of the Canary Islands, whose core population at the end of the 20th century was restricted to the pine forests of Inagua Nature Reserve (38 km ² ). A translocation programme released birds from a breeding centre into the nearby (<3 km) pine fo...

El cambio climático está afectando a la distribución y abundancia de las aves a través del desplazamiento de las condiciones de temperatura y precipitación adecuadas para cada especie. Se prevé que esta tendencia continúe, pero las áreas que serán climáticamente idóneas en el futuro para una especie podrían no disponer de hábitats adecuados para su...

The estimation of the post-mortem interval is crucial to accurately provide bird collision rates against manmade infrastructures. Standard methodologies recommend initially clearing all carcasses to ensure that subsequent collisions can be attributed to known time intervals. In this study, we propose a more cost-efficient approach aiming to link th...

Distribution, abundance, habitat preferences and population trend of Chlamydotis undulata in Spain. https://atlasaves.seo.org/ave/avutarda-hubara-africana/

Distribution, abundance, habitat preferences and population trend of Fringilla polatzeki in Spain. https://atlasaves.seo.org/ave/pinzon-azul-de-gran-canaria/

Distribution, abundance, habitat preferences and population trend of Anthus berthelotii in Spain.

Atlas of the birds of the municipality of San Sebastián (Guipúzcoa, Basque Country). In Spanish and Basque. 256 páginas. Book sample at: http://www.lmcarrascal.eu/pdf/muestra_atlass-b.pdf

The Canary Houbara Bustard has shown a considerable oscillation in numbers from 1994 to 2020 on the island of Lanzarote, while in Fuerteventura it has had a continuous regressive trend that is very worrying. There was a regressive trend from 1994 to 2020 in three quarters of the 18 study areas where the Houbara population was monitored in Fuerteven...

Toda la población de pinzón azul de Gran Canaria estaba restringida a un único reducto de pinar de esta isla. En 2007 un devastador incendio redujo este exiguo núcleo a la mitad. Desde entonces, la traslocación de ejemplares ha hecho posible que se establezca una segunda población y que los efectivos de la especie aumenten un 16%.

Aims This study investigates how precipitation, temperature and seasonality (as a proxy of plant productivity) affect the temporal and spatial variability of soil CO2 efflux in two dry semiarid grasslands with different degrees of land degradation. Methods We measured soil CO2 efflux over four years under plant, biological soil crust and bare soil...

Infectious diseases are considered major threats to biodiversity, however strategies to mitigate their impacts in the natural world are scarce and largely unsuccessful. Chytridiomycosis is responsible for the decline of hundreds of amphibian species worldwide, but an effective disease management strategy that could be applied across natural habitat...

La avutarda hubara canaria ha mostrado una considerable oscilación de efectivos desde 1994 a 2020 en la isla de Lanzarote, mientras que en Fuerteventura ha tenido una continua tendencia regresiva muy preocupante. En las tres cuartas partes de las 18 localidades de monitoreo de la población de hubara de Fuerteventura hubo una tendencia regresiva de...

Carcass counts notably underestimate avian collision rates due to three main bias sources: imperfect detection, carcass removal by scavengers and carcass dispersion in unsearched areas. We assessed these sources of bias at electric lines of two Canary Islands, lanzarote and Fuerteventura, quantifying the factors influencing them. We also carried ou...

Extensive bird monitoring programmes are fundamental for estimating inter-annual population trends using data provided by thousands of observers through standardised fieldwork. Gordo (2018) has proposed that abundance data recorded by common bird monitoring schemes (e.g. SACRE programme) should be used cautiously due to its potential inaccuracy, be...

From 2009 to 2019, the pine forests of Inagua and La Cumbre were surveyed searching for color-banded Gran Canaria blue chaffinches (Fringilla polatzeki). The amount of resighting records was 4,684, corresponding to 616 different marked chaffinches. Those records were obtained in 1,359 different field-work days. One hundred seventy seven blue chaffi...

We provide ecological information on the winter biology of the blue chaffinch (Fringilla polatzeki) in the pine forests of La Cumbre, specifically on its dependence on supplementary food resources, inter-individual variations in the use of feeders (according to sex, age, and wild vs. translocated), the relationship with meteorology, circadian rhyth...

The project's target species, the Gran canaria Blue Chaffinch (Fringílla polatzekl), colloquially known as "pinzul" and "pinero", is considered in the Annex I of the Birds Directive as a "priority species". At the beginning of the project, its population was estimated to be about 300 individuals distributed between the Inagua pine forest (source po...

OBJETIVO: Estimar el tamaño de la población, la densidad media, y el cambio temporal reciente de los efectivos del pinzón azul de Gran Canaria en el entorno de los pinares de La Cumbre (Gran Canaria). Inferir si la población establecida como consecuencia del programa de translocación ha sido viable independientemente de la liberación de ejemplares...

OBJETIVO: Estimar la densidad, el tamaño de la población, la variación espacial de la abundancia, y el cambio temporal reciente de los efectivos del pinzón azul de Gran Canaria (“pinzul”) en la Reserva Integral Natural de Inagua, Ojeda y Pajonales (Gran Canaria).

Risks of parasitism vary over time, with infection prevalence often fluctuating with seasonal changes in the annual cycle. Identifying the biological mechanisms underlying seasonality in infection can enable better prediction and prevention of future infection peaks. Obtaining longitudinal data on individual infections and traits across seasons thr...

Radiotracking, infection and internal temperature data of the studied toads For radiotracking each data point indicates a capture event. For infection data each data point indicates Bd load (zoospore equivalents) recorded for a specific year. For internal temperature data each data point indicates daily averaged internal temperature of every of the...

The evolutionary distinctiveness (ED) score is a measure of phylogenetic isolation that quantifies the evolutionary uniqueness of a species. 2.Here, we compared the ED score of parasitic and non-parasitic cuckoo species worldwide, to understand whether parental care or parasitism represent the largest amount of phylogenetic uniqueness. Next, we foc...

Evidence regarding population trends of endangered species in special protection areas and their recovery ability from catastrophic disturbances is scarce. We assessed the population trend of the Gran Canaria blue chaffinch (Fringilla polatzeki), a habitat specialist endemic to the pine forest of Inagua in the Canary Islands, following a devastatin...

Estimar la densidad y el tamaño de la población del pinzón azul de Gran Canaria (“pinzul”) en La Cumbre (Gran Canaria).

Background Understanding constraints to the distribution of threatened species may help to ascertain whether there are other suitable sectors for reducing the risks associated with species that are recorded in only one protected locality, and to inform about the suitability of other areas for reintroduction or translocation programs. Methods We st...

Supplementary material Tables S1 and Figures S1, S2 and S3.

Background . Understanding constraints to the distribution of threatened species may help to ascertain whether there are other suitable sectors for reducing the risks associated with species that are recorded in only one protected locality, and to inform about the suitability of other areas for reintroduction or translocation programs. Methods . We...

Background . Understanding constraints to the distribution of threatened species may help to ascertain whether there are other suitable sectors for reducing the risks associated with species that are recorded in only one protected locality, and to inform about the suitability of other areas for reintroduction or translocation programs. Methods . We...

The insect exoskeleton is a multifunctional coat with a continuum of mechanical and structural properties constituting the barrier between electromagnetic waves and the internal body parts. This paper examines the ability of beetle exoskeleton to regulate internal body temperature considering its thermal permeability or isolation to simulated solar...

Rdata and Rscript R raw data and R script

Exoskeletons of beetles, and their associated morphological characteristics, can serve many different functions, including thermoregulation. We study the thermal role of the exoskeleton in 13 Geotrupidae dung beetle species using heating experiments under controlled conditions. The main purpose was to measure the influence of heating sources (solar...

Como consecuencia del estatus de conservación de la avutarda hubara canaria (Chlamydotis undulata fuertaventurae), resulta necesario disponer de información fiable y actualizada que permita realizar un diagnóstico de la situación actual de la especie, así como de la tendencia de sus poblaciones. El trabajo de censo realizado a lo largo de noviembre...

Entendiendo los diseños factoriales * Tipo de variables respuesta y predictoras (gausianas, gamma, poisson, binomiales negativas, binomiales, multinomiales). Factores entre- y dentro-de sujetos. Factores fijos y aleatorios. Factores anidados. * Modelos Generales y Generalizados Lineales. Transformación de variables (log, raíz y Box-Cox). Varianza y...

Accurate information on the thermal preference and specialization of species is needed to understand and predict species geographical range size and vulnerability to climate change. Here we estimate the position and breadth of species within thermal gradients based on the shape of the response curve of species abundance to temperature. The objectiv...

Background. The availability of environmental energy, as measured by temperature, is expected to limit the abundance and distribution of endotherms wintering at temperate latitudes. A prediction of this hypothesis is that birds should attain their highest abundances in warmer areas. However, there may be a spatial mismatch between species preferred...

Description of the Spanish Bird Atlas of Winter Birds

Parameters defining the relationship between relative abundance and minimum winter temperature utilized in the study and obtained for 103 terrestrial bird species wintering in the Iberian Peninsula, corresponding to winter censuses on 1,689 10 × 10km2 UTM (years 2008–2011)

Script for R environment employed in analyses and dataset including four example species

In this work, we apply a dynamic modelling approach to analyse the habitat loss of the Canarian houbara bustard (Chlamydotis undulata fuerteventurae). This tool allows us to assess the effects of the socio-economic and environmental interactions on the factors threatening the habitat and to carry out a prospective analysis. The results show a poten...

Entre la acciones preparatorias del proyecto LIFE+PINZON se encuentra la actuación A2: Localización y evaluación de nuevos lugares de suelta de los animales criados en cautividad y traslocados. La selección de los lugares en donde realizar las sueltas debe estar basada en un evaluación preliminar de diversos aspectos, entre los que cabe señalar los...

Desde mediados del s. XX están teniendo lugar procesos de cambio en el paisaje y en el clima a una velocidad sin precedentes. En este tiempo, las especies que viven en zonas agrícolas han sufrido una fuerte regresión y han pasado a encontrarse entre las más amenazadas. En este estudio 1) analizamos la existencia de retrasos en la respuesta de las a...

Background. Availability of environmental energy, as measured by temperature, is expected to limit the abundance and distribution of endotherms wintering at temperate latitudes. A prediction of this hypothesis is that birds should attain their highest abundances in warmer areas. However, there may be a spatial mismatch between species preferred hab...

Background. Availability of environmental energy, as measured by temperature, is expected to limit the abundance and distribution of endotherms wintering at temperate latitudes. A prediction of this hypothesis is that birds should attain their highest abundances in warmer areas. However, there may be a spatial mismatch between species preferred hab...

The study of insect responses to thermal stress has involved a variety of protocols and methodologies that hamper the ability to compare results between studies. For that reason, the development of a protocol to standardize thermal assays is necessary. In this sense, infrared thermography solves some of the problems allowing us to take continuous t...

Afforestation programs such as the one promoted by the EU Common Agricultural Policy have spread tree plantations on former cropland. These afforestations attract generalist forest and ubiquitous species but may cause severe damage to open habitat species, especially birds of high conservation value. We investigated the effects of young (<20 yr) tr...

Supplementary Material

Highly virulent pathogens that cause host population declines confront the risk of fade-out, but if pathogen transmission dynamics are age-structured, pathogens can persist. Among other features of amphibian biology, variable larval developmental rates generate agestructured larval populations, which in theory can facilitate pathogen persistence. W...

Accurate information on the thermal preference and specialization of species is needed to understand and predict species geographical range size and vulnerability to climate change. Here we estimate the position and breadth of species within thermal gradients based on the shape of the response curve of species abundance to temperature. The objectiv...

The fit between life histories and ecological niche is a paradigm of phenotypic evolution, also widely used to explain patterns of species co-occurrence. By analysing the lifestyles of a sympatric avian assemblage, we show that species’ solutions to environmental problems are not unbound. We identify a life-history continuum structured on the cost...

Presentación teórico-práctica de cómo desarrollar Modelos Generalizados Lineales con el paquete estadístico SPSS. Con distribuciones Gausianas, Poisson, Binomiales Negativas, Binomiales (0-1) y Binomiales de frecuencias.

Presentación teórico-práctica de cómo desarrollar diferentes Diseños Factoriales utilizando Modelos Generales Lineales con el paquete estadístico SPSS. AN(c)OVAs n-way, MAN(c)OVAS, NESTED AN(c)OVAs, BLOCK DESIGNs, MIXED AN(c)OVA MODELs, REPEATED MEASURES AN(c)OVAs, SPLIT-SPLIT-... DESIGNS.

Quantifying species abundances is costly, especially when many species are involved. To overcome this problem, several studies have predicted local abundances (at the sample unit level) from species occurrence distribution models (SODMs), with differences in predictive performance among studies. Surprisingly, the ability of SODM to predict regional...

CONTENIDO: Partial Least Squares (PLS) regression analysis Similitudes y diferencias con modelos de regresión lineales Soluciones robustas mediante el uso de bootstrapping. PLS con los paquetes “plsdepot” y “plsRglm”.

CONTENIDO: Modelo Generalizado Lineal con una respuesta Binomial Negativa Modelo Generalizado Lineal “Hurdle” asumiendo inflado de ceros Modelo Generalizado Lineal Logístico, con una respuesta Binomial estimada como frecuencia Modelo Generalizado Aditivo con una respuesta Binomial estimada como frecuencia Revisión de los supuestos canónicos de los...

Amphibians are one of the groups of wildlife most seriously threatened by emerging infectious disease. In particular, chytridiomycosis, caused by the aquatic fungus Batrachochy-trium dendrobatidis, is responsible for amphibian species declines on a worldwide scale. Population-level outcomes following the introduction of the pathogen are context dep...

Las primeras reforestaciones de tierras agrícolas promovidas por la PAC tienen ya más de veinte años. Uno de sus objetivos era aumentar la biodiversidad, pero en muchos casos el resultado ha sido todo lo contrario, según un estudio realizado sobre estos nuevos archipiélagos forestales entre mares agrícolas. Por ello se recomienda blindar las zonas...

Las primeras reforestaciones de tierras agrícolas promovidas por la PAC tienen ya más de veinte años. Uno de sus objetivos era aumentar la biodiversidad, pero en muchos casos el resultado ha sido todo lo contrario, según un estudio realizado sobre estos nuevos archipiélagos forestales entre mares agrícolas. Por ello se recomienda blindar las zonas...

Objective: To analyze the differences in the parameters describing the responses of species abundance to temperature between climatic models (CL; including temperature and precipitation) and models that also account for other environmental variables (CL+ENV; including temperature, precipitation, land cover, topography and geographical location).

The ecological consequences of climate extreme events are still poorly understood, especially those related to cold episodes. Winter cold spells might imperil the energy balance of small passerines, thus compromising their survivorship. Here we analyze how the abundance and habitat use of three tree-gleaning passerine species wintering in a montane...

The mutualistic interactions between fruit-producing plants and seed-dispersing birds may be disrupted by the difficulties involved in tracking fruit resources, which are often patchily distributed in space and time. As a consequence, the strength of this interaction will rely on the ability of birds to distribute numbers according to the spatiotem...

Afforestation programs such as the one promoted by the EU Common Agricultural Policy have spread tree plantations on former cropland. These afforestations attract generalist forest and ubiquitous species but may cause severe damage to open habitat species, especially birds of high conservation value. We investigated the effects of young (< 20 yr) t...

Afforestation programs such as the one promoted by the EU Common Agricultural Policy have spread tree plantations on former cropland. These afforestations attract generalist forest and ubiquitous species but may cause severe damage to open habitat species, especially birds of high conservation value. We investigated the effects of young (< 20 yr) t...

We analyze environmental determinants of roost site selection by tree gleaning passerines wintering in a Mediterranean montane oakwood at a craggy area of high variation in altitude and hill-shading pattern.We hypothesize that in temperate latitudes of cold winter climate, birds should spend the night in areas of low altitudes, higher temperatures,...

Afforestation programs such as the one promoted by the EU Common Agrarian Policy have contributed to spread tree plantations on former cropland. Nevertheless these afforestations may cause severe damage to open habitat species, especially birds of high conservation value. We investigated predation of artificial bird nests at young tree plantations...

Part of the abandoned cropland in Mediterranean landscapes is being subjected to afforestation dominated by pines. Here we simultaneously evaluate the effect of three categories of factors as predictors of the interspecific variation in bird habitat occupancy of fragmented afforestations, namely regional distribution, habitat preferences and life h...

Fruit-frugivore interactions have received great attention from evolutionary, ecological and applied perspectives. However, despite the fact that large-scale approaches may offer new insights on fruit-frugivore interactions, little work has been devoted to explore the factors shaping large-scale variation of seed dispersal. This paper studies the s...

The ecological consequences of climate extreme events are still poorly understood, especially those related to cold episodes. Winter cold spells might imperil the energy balance of small passerines, thus compromising their survivorship. Here we analyze how the abundance and habitat use of three tree-gleaning passerine species wintering in a montane...