Montse Pérez

• PhD Biology
• Research Professor at Spanish National Research Council

The grooved carpet shell clam (Ruditapes decussatus), widely found along Morocco’s coasts and estuaries, is a key economic resource due to its high market value. However, clam production has declined over recent decades, largely due to the overexploitation of natural beds, and recruitment failures, leading to a limited wild spat availability. This...

Egg quality in fishes is commonly determined by fertilisation success and cleavage patterns as a phenotypic outcome of underlying regulatory mechanisms. Although these phenotypic estimators of egg quality are useful in farming conditions, these “good quality” egg batches do not always translate to good larval growth and survival. The identification...

Holocephali is a subclass of chondrichthyans with ample geographic distribution in marine ecosystems. Holocephalan species are organized into three families: Callorhinchidae, Chimaeridae, and Rhinochimaeridae. Despite the critical ecological and evolutionary importance, genomic information from holocephalans is still scarce, particularly from rhino...

This report presents the main findings of the “Transboun- dary population structure of sardine, European hake and blackspot seabream in the Alboran Sea and adjacent wa- ters” (Transboran) research project, which was carried out under the framework of the FAO regional project Cope- Med II and in close collaboration with the GFCM. The project applied...

The Workshop on Bay of Biscay and Iberian Coast Aquaculture Overview (WKBoBICAO) was established to assemble and synthesize aquaculture related data and information and to inform the aquaculture overview for this ecoregion

Nervous necrosis virus (NNV) is one of the greatest threats to Mediterranean aquaculture, infecting more than 170 fish species and causing mortalities up to 100% in larvae and juveniles of susceptible species. Intensive aquaculture implies stressed conditions that affect the welfare of fish and their ability to fight against infections. In fact, a...

Egg specific gravity is of relevance for fish recruitment since the ability to float influences egg and larvae development, dispersal and connectivity between fishing grounds. Using zootechnics, histological approaches, optical and electronic transmission microscopy, this study describes the morphogenetic mechanism of adhesion of the oil-drop cover...

Simple Summary Perumytilus purpuratus is a mussel species that is broadly distributed along the latitudinal gradient from the Southern Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. Along its distribution, P. purpuratus has been historically considered as one species. However, in the last decade, evidence has supported the hypothesis of two geographically divergen...

The European sardine (Sardina pilchardus, Walbaum 1792) is indisputably a commercially important species. Previous studies using uneven sampling or a limited number of makers have presented sometimes conflicting evidence of the genetic structure of S. pilchardus populations. Here, we show that whole genome data from 108 individuals from 16 sampling...

In recent years, the advances in sperm morphology and genetic analyses in Perumytilus purpuratus allowed to suggest two evolutionary scenarios for this mussel: 1) the scenario of cryptic species and 2) the scenario of incipient or in progress speciation. To a better understanding of the evolutionary history of P. purpuratus, we performed an extensi...

Mitogenomes are defined as compact and structurally stable over aeons. This perception results from a vertebrate-centric vision, where few types of mtDNA rearrangements are described. Here, we bring a new light to the involvement of mitochondrial replication in the strand asymmetry of the vertebrate mtDNA. Using several species of deep-sea hatchetf...

Simple Summary The response of marine fish species to external pressures highly depends on their intrinsic bio-ecological traits. Among those species of commercial interest, the deep-water Blackspot Seabream (Pagellus bogaraveo, Brünnich 1768) inhabits a large geographical range, a condition that might contribute to high resilience to fishing activ...

Mitochondrial genomes are by definition compact and structurally stable over aeons. This generalized perception results from a vertebrate-centric vision, as very few types of mtDNA rearrangements have been described in vertebrates. By combining a panel of sequencing approaches, including short- and long-reads, we show that species from a group of i...

Simple Summary The wreckfish Polyprion americanus is a long-living grouper distributed anti-tropically. Three regional gene pools have been described so far in this species, i.e., the Atlantic North, the Atlantic Southwest, and the Indo-Pacific Ocean. This study addresses the interspecific divergence within the genus Polyprion spp. as well as the i...

The European sardine ( Sardina pilchardus , Walbaum 1792) is indisputably a commercially important species. Previous studies using uneven sampling or a limited number of makers have presented sometimes conflicting evidence for the genetic structure of S. pilchardus populations. Here we show that whole genome data from 108 individuals from 16 sampli...

Elasmobranchs are marine species with a global decrease in their fishing abundance in recent decades, largely due to overfishing. Several species, such as rays and skates, present difficulties in morphological identification, which leads to misidentifications. The common skate, Dipturus batis, is currently listed as "critically endangered" by the I...

Chondrichthyans (sharks, rays and chimeras) are a fascinating and highly vulnerable group of early branching gnathostomes. However, they remain comparatively poorly sampled from the point of view of molecular resources, with deep water taxa being particularly data deficient. The development of long-read sequencing technologies enables the analysis...

Whole genome sequence data is an ideal tool for characterizing processes in ecology and evolution. New population genomics data analysis pipelines based on genotype likelihoods allow for a significant reduction in cost by efficiently extracting information from low coverage sequence data. We demonstrate the robustness of such approaches with a geno...

El Libro Blanco de la Alimentación Sostenible en España, realizado por la Fundación Alternativas y la Fundación Carasso, identifica y propone las principales claves para lograr una transición hacia sistemas alimentarios sostenibles y resilientes. Este objetivo se plasma en cada uno de los 13 capítulos temáticos que componen el volumen, a través de...

The production of the aquaculture industry has increased to be equal to that of the world fisheries in recent years. However, aquaculture production faces threats such as infectious diseases. Betanodaviruses induce a neurological disease that affects fish species worldwide and is caused by nervous necrosis virus (NNV). NNV has a nude capsid protect...

Plastics pose serious risks for fish productivity and a potential constraint for food security. Newly hatched blackspot seabream larvae were exposed to microplastics (MPs), copper (Cu, 10-810 µg/L) and their mixtures (Cu+MPs), during 3 and 9 days. Biochemical biomarkers and the expression of antioxidant and neurotoxicity-related genes were evaluate...

Evaluating the survival of discarded species is gaining momentum after the new European Common Fisheries Policy (Article 15 of the European Regulation No. 1380/2013). This regulation introduced a discard ban, with an exemption for those species with demonstrated high survival rates after their capture and release. Candidate species should be evalua...

The highly migratory Atlantic bluefin tuna (ABFT) is currently managed as two distinct stocks, in accordance with natal homing behavior and population structuring despite the absence of barriers to gene flow. Larval fish are valuable biological material for tuna molecular ecology. However, they have hardly been used to decipher the ABFT population...

Introduction Plastic litter has become a major global problem with the increase in use and production of plastics over the last decades. Over time, plastic waste breaks down to fragments smaller than 5 mm, called microplastics (MP) (Teuten et al. 2009). Despite the observed interactions of large plastic items with seabirds and marine mammals (Moore...

Whole genome sequence data is an ideal tool for characterizing processes in ecology and evolution. Despite the lowering in sequencing costs, it can be challenging to produce a genome and high-coverage resequencing data for a non-model species. New population genomics data analysis pipelines based on genotype likelihoods allow for a significant redu...

Hakes of the genus Merluccius include 11 valid species as well a number of rare morphotypes suspected to be “cryptic species”. Concatenated nucDNA ITS1-rDNA and mtDNA cyt b sequences plus nested ITS1Nes sequences allowed to ascribe 14 specimens of nine rare morphotypes from the South Pacific and the South Atlantic to the phylogenetic backbone of th...

Scenario analysis can guide aquaculture planning to meet sustainable future production goals. Marine aquaculture holds great promise for meeting increasing demand for healthy protein that is sustainably produced, but reaching necessary production levels will be challenging. The ecosystem approach to aquaculture is a framework for sustainable aquacu...

Cartilaginous fish are fascinating taxa, present in the folklore and art of many different cultures. Moreover, they display several unique anatomical, physiological, molecular, and behavioral characteristics making them extremely interesting from a biological perspective. Nevertheless, some crucial knowledge gaps remain, including phylogenetic rela...

Species of the Sternoptychidae teleost family display an impressive morphology, including their extreme reduced size. Here, we report the first mitochondrial genome of the diaphanous hatchet fish Sternoptyx diaphana. By using short-read sequencing Illumina HiSeq, we generated two mitochondrial contigs which were later physically assembled by PCR. T...

Nuclear receptors (NRs) are key transcription factors that originated in the common ancestor of metazoans. The vast majority of NRs are triggered by binding to either endogenous (e.g. retinoic acid) or exogenous (e.g. xenobiotics) ligands, and their evolution and expansion is tightly linked to the function of endocrine systems. Importantly, they re...

Mind the gap between ICES nations' future seafood consumption and aquaculture production. As the human population grows and climate change threatens the stability of seafood sources, we face the key question of how we will meet increasing demand, and do so sustainably. Many of the 20 International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) membe...

Three elasmobranch species of the genus Deania are currently reported in NE Atlantic waters: D. calcea, D. hystricosa and D. profundorum; however, in north Spanish waters (NE Atlantic), only D. calcea and D. profundorum have been caught. Among the criteria used to discriminate Deania species one is dermal denticle length and body colour. In this st...

To ensure the maintenance of natural mussel beds along the southeastern Pacific coast of Chile, it is important to understand their population dynamics. This means evaluating their genetic population structure and gene flow, and the degree of connectivity among natural beds. To do this, the spatial genetic population structure of seven natural Myti...

Cartilaginous fishes are a highly vulnerable vertebrate group but remain poorly studied, especially those occupying deep-water ecological niches. Here, we describe the complete mitogenome of the deep-water chimaeriform Hydrolagus affinis (de Brito Capello, 1868) (Holocephali: Chimaeridae). The mitogenome has 19,437 nucleotides and the same overall...

The common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) is a species of great interest to the aquaculture industry. However, the high mortalities registered during different phases of the octopus lifecycle, the paralarvae stage, present a challenge for commercial aquaculture. Improvement of diet formulation is seen as one way to reduce mortality and improve growth....

Introduction Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) is a key fish in the marine trophism of the Northern Hemisphere and an emerging species in aquaculture. Cod is characterized for being iteroparous with synchronous oocyte development and spawning up to 19 batches over several weeks (February-May) (Kleppe et al., 2014). Viability of eggs and embryos is unpred...

Four different wreckfish (Polyprion americanus) broodstock batches were maintained in research facilities under different photo and thermo-period conditions, one in Greece, the Helenic Center for Marine Research (HCMR, n = 3) and three in Spain: Instituto Español de Oceanografía (IEO, n = 13) in Vigo, Aquarium Finisterrae (MC2, n = 21) in A Coruña...

Perumytilus purpuratus is a marine mussel considered a bioengineer species with a broad distribution in the Pacific and Atlantic coast of South America. Studies have shown two geographically and genetically differentiated subpopulations at molecular level and in sperm morphological traits. To open avenues for molecular research on P. purpuratus, a...

The variable egg quality of fish eggs and larvae is generally known as the major constraint in the further development of marine aquaculture. As a key species in the Northern ecosystems and as an emerging species in aquaculture, the Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) has been studied from fertilization until first-feeding stage. Nevertheless, valid criter...

Processes regulating population connectivity are complex, ranging from extrinsic environmental factors to intrinsic individual based features, and are a major force shaping the persistence of fish species and population responses to harvesting and environmental change. Here we developed an integrated assessment of demographic and genetic connectivi...

Knowledge of genetic structuring is a prior for the effective management of marine fisheries. The genetic representativeness of the tools applied to unveil population structure is currently unwarranted so new genetic tools are welcome to deal with new challenges. We report the screening of 476,747 sequences from a transcriptome library of the Europ...

The historical analysis of genetic diversity in the southern European hake fishery allows to measuring its remnant genetic background. This study comprises the fishing period 1975-2014 and the molecular analyses employing microsatellites and mitochondrial DNA suggest that there has been a significant decrease of the expected effective population si...

Historically, stock delimitation has followed a top-down approach, in which management stewardships decide stock boundaries attending mainly to political reasons and fisheries assessment consequently adapts. However, there are currently vast evidence showing that stock delimitation should be based in scientific evidences. This inherently requires m...

Octopus vulgaris is a species of great interest in research areas such as neurobiology, ethology, and ecology but also a candidate species for aquaculture as a food resource and for alleviating the fishing pressure on its wild populations. This study aimed to characterize the predatory behavior of O. vulgaris paralarvae and to quantify their digest...

Scarce evidence exists on the amount of genetic diversity remaining after fishing overharvest, on how the genetic effective population size (Ne) behaves under counteracting forces such as drift and migration, and on Ne predictability of population status and trends. This study aims testing both, the temporal stability of the genetic diversity among...

The large variety of fish formats which are globally commercialized supports use of meta-evaluation studies to test discrimination power among molecular keys available for traceability of highly-degraded and/or chemically-modified DNA material. This paper shows that a combination of DNA identification methods validated for genus Merluccius allows 1...

Diversification of marine species has emerged as a priority in the aquaculture agenda of many countries due to its large industrial potential and as an alternative to overharvested fisheries. Aquaculture diversification entails new challenges during early life stages of candidate species such as survival bottlenecks or body malformations, many of t...

This study describes the effect of seasonal average temperatures (14 and 18°C) in the Ría of Vigo, on the utilization of external yolk over the last five Naef stages of development (XV-XX) for Octopus vulgaris embryos. Also, the transference of the outer yolk to the inner yolk sac, and its use during embryonic development and early life by O. vulga...

Historical processes leading to the emergence of marine stocks, the mechanisms maintaining stock structure, and present-day connectivity patterns are elementary pieces of information to design wiser and more sustainable management of marine resources, and to understand speciation processes in the sea. Over geographical scales, biological and geneti...

The wreckfish Polyprion americanus is a component of directed and admixed species fisheries throughout its world range and has recently been identified for its aquaculture potential. Several wreckfish broodstocks were founded in Galician hatcheries in the last decade and are now approaching maturity. The combination of genetic markers with classic...

The European hake (Merluccius merluccius) is a highly valuable and intensely fished species in which a long-term alive stock has been established in captivity for aquaculture purposes. Due to their huge economic importance, genetic studies on hakes were mostly focused on phylogenetic and phylogeographic aspects; however chromosome numbers are still...

This study presents evidence, using sequences of ribosomal 16S and COI mtDNA, for the presence of two mitochon-drial genomes in Perumytilus purpuratus. This may be considered evidence of doubly uniparental mtDNA inheritance. The presence of the two types of mitochondrial genomes differentiates females from males. The F genome was found in the somat...

The aim of this study was to identify some of the Apristurus species by combining morphometric and genetic tools. Several specimens of the genus Apristurus were caught on the Galicia Bank Seamount (NE Atlantic), between 1460 and 1809 m depths, during a multidisciplinary survey carried out in 2011 within the framework of the INDEMARES Project. Morph...

Population genetic data of marine genetic resources add up to establish their pattern of connectivity. Such pattern determines the choice of a suitable management strategy to those resources in space and time. This study addresses the pattern of connectivity among European hake grounds upon the largest sampling effort so far developed in this speci...

Seventeen chondrichthyan species were caught in the Cantabrian Sea (southern Bay of Biscay) during a multidisciplinary survey carried out in the Avilés canyon system in May 2011. This survey provided the first records of three species (Galeus murinus, Neoraja iberica, and Neoraja caerulea) in these waters, and a further record of Rajella kukujevi....

Connectivity in benthic marine animals with complex life cycles occurs primarily during the pelagic larval stage and depends deterministically on oceanographic dynamics. The scale of such larval dispersal is highly uncertain due the difficulty of direct measurement and poor knowledge of larval dynamics and ocean flow variability. This study charact...

Chondricthyan fish were caught in the Galicia Bank (NE Atlantic) during a multidisciplinary survey carried out in 2011 within the framework of INDEMARES Project. A total of 94 fish species were identified and among these 14 chondrichthyan species belonging to six families: Chimaeridae, Hexanchidae, Scyliorhinidae, Centrophoridae, Etmopteridae and S...

For the first time in a marine bivalve species, geographic intraspecific variation in sperm morphology in the Chilean mussel, Perumytilus purpuratus, is reported. Samples were obtained in December 2010 from the rocky intertidal at three locations: Antofagasta (23º44’01.08’’S, 70º26’26.11’’W), Valparaíso (32º57’23.07’’S, 71º33’01.86’’W), and Valdivi...

Several types of neurons within the central and peripheral somatic nervous system express two-pore-domain potassium (K2P) channels, providing them with resting potassium conductances. We demonstrate that these channels are also expressed in the autonomic nervous system where they might be important modulators of neuronal excitability. We observed s...

The Chilean blue mussel or chorito quilmahue, Mytilus chilensis (Hupe, 1854) is thought to be distributed from Arica (18ºS) to Cape Horn (56ºS) (Lancellotti and Vásquez, 2000). The Chilean mytiliculture has been mainly developed on mass culture of M. chilensis from natural banks of regions X, XII and XIV, around Chiloé Island (39º 15'S - 44º 04'S)....

The taxonomic status of the Chilean blue mussel Mytilus chilensis has been controversial for decades because of its phenotypic and genetic proximity to other species of the genus Mytilus from both hemispheres. This study reports the development of nine polymorphic microsatellite markers from the M. chilensis genome. The number of alleles per locus...

This article documents the addition of 111 microsatellite marker loci to the Molecular Ecology Resources Database. Loci were developed for the following species: Acipenser oxyrinchus desotoi, Anopheles nuneztovari sensu lato, Asellus aquaticus, Calopteryx splendens, Calopteryx virgo, Centaurea aspera, Centaurea seridis, Chilina dombeyana, Proctoece...

The sinking of the tanker Prestige in November 2002 off the coast of Galicia resulted in the release of about 60,000 tons of heavy oil. The oil-spill provoked a serious environmental impact in Spanish and French coasts, which biological consequences are still being assessed. In this study we address the temporal dynamics of genetic diversity in som...

Systematic genetic analyses of fish populations allow the testing of temporal stability in their genetic structures and better understanding their pattern of connectivity. In this study the pattern of gene flow between the two Atlantic stocks of the European hake has been examined for the period 2000–2002. Present analyses indicate that a large gen...

Background K2P channels play a key role in stabilizing the resting membrane potential, thereby modulating cell excitability in the central and peripheral somatic nervous system. Whole-cell experiments revealed a riluzole-activated current (I(RIL)), transported by potassium, in mouse superior cervical ganglion (mSCG) neurons. The activation of this...

Incorporating population genetic data into assessment processes would prove useful for the management of hake fisheries. We have analysed the molecular variation of five polymorphic microsatellites and a 465 bp fragment from the cytochrome b gene on 27 hake populations to determine the genetic status of this species across European fisheries. While...

This population genetics study on Mytilus galloprovincialis aims to clarify whether northern Moroccan populations fit into the biogeographical pattern of Iberian populations characterized by a main genetic discontinuity at the Almería - Orán Oceanographic Front (AOOF). We report a reduced gene flow between northern Moroccan mussels distributed at b...

The adaptation of University degrees and teaching methodologies to the European Space for Higher Education (ESHE) is showing two opposite attitudes in the professorship. The first one is termed here �Nobody will talk about us when we�re dead. This attitude is continuistic and assumes the prevalence of methodologies predating ESHE, although it incor...