Manuel Nogales

Spanish National Research Council | CSIC · Instituto de Productos Naturales y Agrobiología

Interaction frequency is the most common currency in quantitative ecological networks, although interaction quality can also affect benefits provided by mutualisms. Here, we evaluate if interaction quality can modify network topology, species' role and whether such changes affect community vulnerability to species loss. We use a well-examined study...

Pigeons are considered to play key ecological roles in frugivory and seed dispersal. They have colonised numerous oceanic islands and diversified into several species in sympatry. How these species coexist in similar niches is poorly understood although dietary separation is among the mechanisms suggested to avoid trophic overlap. We investigated t...

Insects show remarkable phenotypic plasticity in response to changing environmental conditions. The abiotic factors that determine their phenotypes often vary in time and space, and oceanic islands harbour ideal environments for testing predictions on this matter. The ubiquitous beetle Pimelia laevigata costipennis Wollaston, 1864 (Tenebrionidae) i...

Volcanic activity provides a unique opportunity to study the ecological responses of organisms to catastrophic environmental destruction as an essential driver of biodiversity change on islands. However, despite this great scientific interest, no study of the biodiversity at an erupting volcano has yet been undertaken. On La Palma (Canary archipela...

Background and aims: The Canary Islands have strong floristic affinities with the Mediterranean Basin. One of the most characteristic and diverse vegetation belt of the archipelago is the thermophilous woodland (between 200 and 900 m.a.s.l.). This thermophilous plant community consists of many non-endemic species shared with the Mediterranean Flor...

Rabbits have travelled with humans to the most remote archipelagos, having been introduced on at least 800 islands worldwide. This herbivore has caused a devastating effect on endemic insular plants, causing changes in species composition, cascading extinctions and disruption of native seed dispersal systems worldwide. However, its ecological impac...

Reticulitermes flavipes, one of the most harmful subterranean termite pests, was recently reported for the first time from Tenerife (Canary Islands, Spain). It is estimated that it was introduced between 2002 and 2005 in the northeast of the island. It affects buildings, crops and both native and ornamental plant species there, with consequent econ...

In autumn 2021, the largest volcanic eruption on the island of La Palma in historic records took place. The Canary Islands are of volcanic origin and eruptions have always constituted part of their natural disturbance regime. Until recently, their impacts could not be directly observed and studied. Influence of the emission of phytotoxic gases on b...

El Parque Nacional del Teide alberga los principales núcleos poblacionales de cedro canario (Juniperus cedrus) en la isla de Tenerife. Los estudios científicos que aquí se recopilan han supuesto un importante avance en el conocimiento de esta especie y sientan la base para futuras investigaciones y actuaciones de gestión orientadas a la conservació...

Insects show remarkable phenotypic plasticity in response to changing environmental conditions. The abiotic factors that determine their phenotypes often vary in time and space, and oceanic islands harbour ideal environments for testing predictions on this matter. The ubiquitous beetle Pimelia laevigata costipennis Wollaston, 1864 (Tenebrionidae) i...

Scientific and grey literature on invasive alien species (IAS) is conditioned by social, economic and political priorities, editorial preferences and species and ecosystem characteristics. This leads to knowledge gaps and mismatches between scientific research interests and management needs. We reviewed the literature on IAS management in Spain fou...

Research in Macaronesia has led to substantial advances in ecology, evolution and conservation biology. We review the scientific developments achieved in this region, and outline promising research avenues enhancing conservation. Some of these discoveries indicate that the Macaronesian flora and fauna is composed of rather young lineages, not Terti...

The interaction between climate change and biological invasions is a global conservation challenge with major consequences for invasive species management. However, our understanding of this interaction has substantial knowledge gaps; this is particularly relevant for invasive snakes on islands because they can be a serious threat to island ecosyst...

Summary of species inhabiting laurel forest that are consumed by the black rat (Rattus rattus) in the Canary Islands as registered by direct observation, personal communication, bibliography review, and detected in our macrohistological and DNA-based analyses (taxonomic identification of species using DNA sequences).

Summary of number of observations per level of each variable, including dropping locations and habitat, DNA barcoded plant species and dietary toxicity following Delgado (1998). We removed dropping nº4 from the statistical analyses because it was taken the same day and at the same location that dropping nº60.

Frequency of invertebrates found in the 79 droppings (out of 100) genetically identified using the GenBank BLAST.

Aim Seed dispersal by oceanic currents (thalassochory) is considered one of the main long‐distance dispersal (LDD) mechanisms for the colonization of oceanic islands by plants. Diaspores of littoral species are often hypothesized to be physiologically adapted to seawater dispersal, favouring interisland colonization. In this study, we experimentall...

The black rat (Rattus rattus) is an alien species that causes severe impact on island ecosystems, floras and faunas. The main aim of this study was to determine the plant and animal contributions to black rat diet in a pristine misty laurel forest area on La Palma (Canary Islands). Our working hypothesis was that this rat equally consumes plants an...

Many vertebrate species act as both plant pollinators and seed-dispersers, thus interconnecting these processes, particularly on islands. Ecological multilayer networks are a powerful tool to explore interdependencies between processes; however, quantifying the links between species engaging in different types of interactions (i.e. inter-layer edge...

en Studies on feral cat diet offer important ecological information and are the first step towards determining their impact upon endangered species. However, in comparing seasonal changes in diet with seasonal prey availability, the scarce amount of research into oceanic islands worldwide must be considered when deciding if a specific population is...

Aim Coastal plants are terrestrial organisms for which ocean surface currents often act as long‐distance dispersal vectors (thalassochorous species) favouring broad distributions and connecting distant populations. However, few studies have statistically assessed the role of currents in modulating gene flow and species distributions of terrestrial...

Invasion events provide unique opportunities to explore how invasive species adapt to new environments. Size is one of the most important and obvious traits of an organism 1 , so understanding its changes could provide interesting insights to unravel invasive species evolution and mechanisms of adaptation in their invasive range. The invasive Calif...

Here, we first quantify the prey composition of an insular sparrowhawk population, during two stages: incubation-nestling, and post-fledging and dispersion of fledglings. On Madeira, we collected prey remains monthly during two consecutive breeding periods in 51 sparrowhawk nesting territories. Overall, we found 470 individuals of 13 species, of wh...

Nocturnal pollination plays an important role in sexual plant reproduction but has been overlooked, partially because of intrinsic difficulties in field experimentation. Even less attention has received the effect of within-inflorescence spatial position (distal or proximal) on nocturnal pollinators of columnar plants, despite numerous studies exam...

The behavioural complementarity of fruit‐eating animals is thought to exert a key role in plant community assembly. However, a mechanistic understanding of the causal links between the two processes is still lacking. This study assesses if complementarity between dispersers in feeding and microhabitat‐use behaviour enhances community‐scale dispersa...

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...

Islands harbor a considerable portion of global biodiversity and endemic biota, and also are the recipients of the largest proportional numbers of alien invaders. Such invaders may jeopardize the performance of native species, through either their direct or indirect effects. In this study, we investigated the reproductive ecology of the endemic scr...

Climatic conditions changing over time and space shape the evolution of organisms at multiple levels, including temperate lizards in the family Lacertidae. Here we reconstruct a dated phylogenetic tree of 262 lacertid species based on a supermatrix relying on novel phylogenomic datasets and fossil calibrations. Diversification of lacertids was acco...

The simplicity of insular communities implies less functional redundancy compared to analogous assemblages on the mainland. This has important implications for island conservation since the disappearance of one species could lead to the loss of its function in the ecosystem. Fruit-eating animals are key elements in many ecosystems, performing essen...

Aim To assess whether the reduced nutritional resources available for pollinators due to plant community simplification along an elevational plant‐diversity gradient changes pollinator niche breadth and richness. Additionally, we evaluated how body size and proboscis length of pollinators shifted along the gradient, and whether these changes were r...

Cats (Felis silvestris catus) are one of the most pernicious invasive species on islands, being responsible for the decline and extinction of many vertebrate taxa. Eradications programs are a powerful tool to fight against cat impacts on islands, but their implementation requires planning and design to prevent failure. In that sense, gathering data...

Fern sporangia may provide an important source of energy for bird species, which in turn can act as potential dispersers of viable spores. This study reports the first case of fern spore dispersal by land birds. We document the consumption of fern sporangia and evaluate the potential spore dispersal by Galápagos Finches on Santa Cruz Island. Overal...

published in "Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution"

Lizards have been reported as important pollinators on several oceanic islands. Here we evaluate the potential role of Galápagos lava lizards (Microlophus spp.) as pollinators across their radiation. During three years, we sampled pollen transport by nine lava lizard species on the 10 islands where they are present, including seven single‐island en...

PREMISE OF THE STUDY: The characteristic scarcity of insects on remote oceanic islands has driven non-flower specialized vertebrates to broaden their trophic niches and explore floral resources. From our previous studies in the Galápagos, we know that native insectivorous and frugivorous birds visit a wide range of entomophilous flowers and can als...

Islands tend to have lower species richness, more endemic species, and more pronounced extinction rates than mainland ecosystems. It makes island biota particularly vulnerable to habitat degradation, hunting and invasive species. As a consequence, many species have gone extinct on islands worldwide, especially on oceanic islands. The loss of these...

Background and Aims Oceanic island ecosystems favor the appearance of novel interactions as a consequence of their depauperate and disharmonic flora and fauna. Echium simplex, endemic to the Anaga Biosphere Reserve in NE Tenerife, Canary Islands, belongs to the Canarian bird–flower element. Methods Along two flowering seasons, we studied its breed...

Personality traits overlap in behavioral syndromes that are assumed to be related to physiology and life history traits, shaping pace-of-life syndromes. Boldness and explorative behavior are frequently associated with higher parasite loads, increased resource acquisition, less efficient antipredator behavior, and reduced survival (e.g., through pre...

Frugivory in lizards is often assumed to be constrained by body size; only large individuals are considered capable of consuming fruits, with the potential of acting as seed dispersers. However, only one previous study has tested the correlation of frugivory with body and head size at an archipelago scale across closely related species. All nine la...

Los ecosistemas de alta montaña, y en especial los de islas oceánicas, constituyen uno de los ambien-tes más aislados y únicos del planeta, albergando una biota muy particular especialmente vulnerable al cambio climático y a otras perturbaciones como la presencia de especies invasoras. Por ello hemos seleccionado la planta que vive a mayor altitud...

Alpine ecosystems on islands are among the most isolated on Earth, leading to very high rates of endemism. Endemic species on oceanic islands are particularly vulnerable to invasive herbivores. In the alpine zone of Tenerife, which harbors a unique endemic flora, the dominance pattern of the two most dominant species in our days (Spartocytisus supr...

Life on oceanic islands deviate in many ways from that on the mainland. Their biodiversity is relatively poor and some groups are well-represented, others not, especially not insects. A scarcity of insects forces birds to explore alternative food, such as nectar and fruit. In this way, island birds may pollinate and disperse seed to an extent unsee...

The endangered Galápagos shrub snapdragon (Galvezia leucantha, Antirrhineae, Plantaginaceae) is restricted to small populations on four islands. In this study, we appraised results from taxonomy, genetics, phylogenetics, phylogeography and pollination ecology to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the genus Galvezia. Peru, continental Ecuador a...

Oceanic islands emerge lifeless from the seafloor and are separated from continents by long stretches of sea. Consequently, all their species had to overcome this stringent dispersal filter, making these islands ideal systems to study the biogeographic implications of long-distance dispersal (LDD). It has long been established that the capacity of...

1. The ongoing biodiversity crisis entails the concomitant loss of species and the ecological services they provide. Global defaunation, and particularly the loss of frugivores, may negatively affect the seed dispersal of fleshy-fruited plant species, with predictable stronger impacts in simplified communities such as those on oceanic islands. Howe...

RESUMEN Los ecosistemas de alta montaña, y en especial los de islas oceánicas, constituyen uno de los ambien-tes más aislados y únicos del planeta, albergando una biota muy particular especialmente vulnerable al cambio climático y a otras perturbaciones como la presencia de especies invasoras. Por ello hemos seleccionado la planta que vive a mayor...

Seed dispersal and seedling recruitment are crucial phases in the life cycle of all spermatophyte plants. The net contribution of seed dispersers to plant establishment is known as seed dispersal effectiveness (SDE) and is defined as the product of a quantitative (number of seeds dispersed) and a qualitative (probability of recruitment) component....

Summit areas of oceanic islands constitute some of the most isolated ecosystems on earth, highly vulnerable to climate change and introduced species. Within the unique high-elevation communities of Tenerife (Canary Islands), reproductive success and thus long-term survival of species may depend on environmental suitability as well as threat by intr...

Removal of feral cats from island environments is a useful mechanism by which their ecological impact on endangered species can be reduced or ended. Nevertheless, because cats are anthropogenic in their origins, social perceptions of management practices play a large role in their implementation. Four-hundred questionnaires were delivered (386 were...

Capsule: The diet of Yellow-legged Gulls Larus michahellis on an oceanic island, surrounded by deep waters without a wide shelf, was mainly composed of terrestrial invertebrates.Aims: To study the trophic ecology of Yellow-legged Gulls on an island surrounded by deep waters, to quantify the importance of terrestrial prey items and their availabilit...