Pedro Abellán

• PhD
• University of Seville

Aim Understanding the processes that structure biodiversity on Earth is a major challenge in biology. Our work tests three key hypotheses driving taxonomic changes in bird communities globally, focusing on nestedness and turnover components: (1) contemporary climate, related to energy and water availability; (2) climate stability, reflecting shifts...

Because insects are unable to regulate their body temperatures, they are vulnerable to rising temperatures and habitat disturbances that limit access to optimal microhabitats. This study examines how these factors affect the taxonomic and functional diversity of Odonata insects (Anisoptera and Zygoptera) in a tropical dry landscape. We assessed tax...

Species distributed across wide elevational gradients are likely to experience local thermal adaptation and exhibit high thermal plasticity, as these gradients are characterised by steep environmental changes over short geographic distances (i.e., strong selection differentials). The prevalence of adaptive intraspecific variation in thermal toleran...

Despite aquatic coleoptera are a well-studied group in the Iberian Peninsula, at a smaller spatial scale, there are still areas with scarcity in their inventories. Using an extensive database, which compiles bibliographic citations and unpublished samplings carried out in the area from the 1980s to the present, the catalogue of aquatic Coleoptera s...

An intricate interplay between evolutionary and demographic processes has frequently resulted in complex patterns of genetic and phenotypic diversity in alpine lineages, posing serious challenges to species delimitation and biodiversity conservation planning. Here we integrate genomic data, geometric morphometric analyses and thermal tolerance expe...

This chapter provides simple and direct identification keys for adults (at genus level) and larvae (at family level) of the Mediterranean aquatic Coleoptera considered as “true water beetles,” that is, those species of beetles that spent most of the time of their adult stage submerged (larvae and pupae may be aquatic or terrestrial). We have includ...

High mountain areas are especially vulnerable to global warming, as they experience faster temperature changes than lowlands in a climate change context. Notably, increased temperatures and frequency of extreme flooding and droughts, and the consequent decrease in ice cover and water availability fluctuations, will induce important physical changes...

1. Biodiversity conservation is a central imperative of the 21st century. Subterranean ecosystems deliver critical nature's contributions to people and harbour a broad diversity of poorly understood specialised organisms. However, the subterranean biome is still largely overlooked in global biodiversity targets. 2. We assessed how well subterrane...

Here we focused on the co-occurrence pattern on regional and local scales, and on the niche differences of two species of congeneric beetles (Ochthebius quadricollis and O. lejolisii, Hydraenidae) exclusive of supratidal rockpools. Abundances of adults and larval stages from both species and environmental variables were obtained in 10 pools from 12...

Invasive species pose a major threat to biodiversity, ecological structure of habitats and agriculture, especially in a setting of climatic change. The impact of these species also has a major role in the spread of exotic vector-borne diseases, which may cause substantial economic losses in agriculture if cultivated species are among those affected...

Sierra Nevada, the southernmost alpine system in Europe, hosts a complex of ponds and small lakes scattered throughout the highest parts of this massif, many of which are of glacial origin. These lakes are of particular interest, as they are subject to extreme environmental conditions and harbor simplified aquatic macroinvertebrate communities with...

Sierra Nevada, the southernmost alpine system in Europe, hosts a complex of ponds and small lakes scattered throughout the highest parts of this massif, many of which are of glacial origin. These lakes are of particular interest, as they are subject to extreme environmental conditions and harbor simplified aquatic macroinvertebrate communities with...

The conservation of biodiversity is a central imperative of the 21st century. Subterranean ecosystems deliver critical nature's contributions to people and harbour a broad diversity of poorly-understood specialized organisms that are of interest from both a conservation and evolutionary perspective. However, the subterranean biome is still systemat...

The cover image relates to the Research Article https://doi.org/10.1111/ddi.13591 “Climate matching and anthropogenic factors contribute to the colonization and extinction of local populations during avian invasions” by Cardador et al. Two monk parakeets (Myiopsitta monachus) in the city of Sevilla, Spain. Image credit: José Luis Tella.

Aim Concern about the impacts of biological invasions has generated a great deal of interest in understanding factors that determine invasion success. Most of our current knowledge comes from static approaches that use spatial patterns as a proxy of temporal processes. These approaches assume that species are present in areas where environmental co...

The supralittoral rockpools, on the land and sea ecotone, are highly dynamic habitats with extreme conditions. The few and exclusive species living there are subjected to multiple stressors (i.e., salinity, temperature, desiccation). Among them, several species of the genus Ochthebius (Coleoptera: Hydraenidae) are frequently cooccurring. Whether fu...

Global change is impacting our lives in many ways [...]

The Sierra NevadaSierra Nevada massif is a hotspotHot-spot nested within a biodiversityBiodiversityhotspotHot-spot in the Western Mediterranean (the Baetic-Rifian range, divided by the Strait of Gibraltar), which in turn is found within one the hottest spots in the World, the Mediterranean Basin. The geographic, geomorphological, geological and cli...

Morphologically cryptic lineages confound many estimates of global biodiversity and are often discovered in ecologically specialized taxa, subject to strong morphological constraint. Such a situation may apply in many extreme environments, including supralittoral rockpools, where dramatic fluctuations in water availability and salinity impose stron...

Morphologically cryptic lineages confound many estimates of global biodiversity and are often discovered in ecologically specialized taxa, subject to strong morphological constraint. Such a situation may apply in many extreme environments, including supralittoral rockpools, where dramatic fluctuations in water availability and salinity impose stron...

Species distribution models (SDM) have been proposed as valuable first screening tools for predicting species responses to new environmental conditions. SDMs are usually conducted at the species level, assuming that species-environment relationships are a species-specific feature that do not evolve and show no variability across a species’ range. H...

Este vídeo didáctico sobre taxonomía permite observar los colores y morfología de los equinodermos en su hábitat marino natural. El recurso complementa las prácticas de la asignatura de Zoología e incluye información útil para la identificación de especies representativas de las diferentes Clases del Filo Echinodermata: Asteroidea, Ophiuroidea, Cri...

• The effects of climate change may constitute a major threat factor for endemic and threatened species of invertebrates. A particularly dramatic case can be found in the Iberian Peninsula, because of its high rate of species diversity and endemism. We aim to evaluate the effects of climate change on the distribution of 36 endangered and endemic sp...

This paper deals with some Collembola from a cave at La Sierra de Grazalema (Málaga). In total, eight species of springtails were found. Two may represent new species but there is insufficient material available to prepare full descriptions (one species in the genus Ceratophysella , one in Hypogastrura ), one species (Folsomides cf. ayllonensis) is...

The long-term geological stability of aquatic habitats has been demonstrated to be a determinant in the evolution of macroinvertebrate fauna, with species in running (lotic) waters having lower dispersal abilities, smaller ranges and higher gene flow between populations than species in standing (lentic) environments. Lotic species have been hypothe...

We present a dataset that assembles occurrence records of alien tetrapods (amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals) in the Iberian Peninsula, a coherent biogeographically unit where introductions of alien species have occurred for millennia. These data have important potential applications for ecological research and management, including the asses...

In memoriam to Ignacio Ribera (1963-2020)L

We assessed the relative importance of human activity and environmental suitability as drivers of compositional dissimilarity of alien birds for 65 of the most populous cities of the Iberian Peninsula. We examined how these drivers relate to Zeta diversity (f) for alien Passeriformes and Psittaciformes. We performed the analysis using multiple orde...

Accurate assessments of species' vulnerability to climate change require integrated measurements of its different drivers, including extrinsic (the magnitude and rate of climate change) and intrinsic factors (organisms' sensitivity and adaptive capacity). According to these factors, aquatic insects restricted to alpine ponds may be especially threa...

Aquatic beetles can be characterized based on the habitats where they live, with a main division between species living in standing water or species living in running waters. Both habitat types present differences based on their physical and chemical characteristics, leading to different ecological dynamics at geological scale, in essentially long-...

International wildlife trade is a major source of current biological invasions. However, the power of trade regulations to reduce invasion risks at large, continental scales has not been empirically assessed. The European wild bird trade ban was implemented in 2005 to counter the spread of the avian flu. We tested whether the ban reduced invasion r...

One of the main challenges in disciplines such as ecology, biogeography, conservation and evolutionary biology is to understand and predict how species will respond to environmental changes, especially within a climate change context. We focus on the deep subterranean environment to minimize uncertainties in predictions, because it is one of the fe...

RESUMEN: Este artículo presenta el proyecto de investigación CAVEheAT (cambio climático, nicho térmico y conservación de la biodiversidad subterránea). El objetivo del proyecto es estudiar el nicho térmico (rango de tolerancia térmica y capacidad de aclimatación) de especies (principalmente coleópteros) con diferentes grados de especialización al m...

Significance The awareness of the negative consequences of biological invasions and the critical importance of evidence-based decision making have led to a persistent effort to understand the factors driving the successful invasion of exotic species and to predict invasion outcome. We assess, taking advantage of an exceptionally comprehensive datas...

Aim Current geographical distributions in conjunction with species‐level phylogenies have been viewed as offering an enormous potential for investigating the causes of speciation. However, many authors have concluded that species ranges are too dynamic to retain the historical signal of the speciation processes. We develop an approach to explore th...

The presence of the white-clawed crayfish, Austropotamobius pallipes (Lereboullet 1858), within the Murcia Region is confirmed. So far, the scarce information on its historical presence in this administrative region (only an imprecise record published in 1964 and interviews with nature wardens that worked there at the beginning of the 70’s) placed...

Phylogeography and ecological niche modelling are two key approaches advancing biogeography. A special issue of Folia Zoologica (64: 2015) considers these advances in eight articles, including two reviews—on Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) and Ecological Niche Modelling (ENM)—and six research articles, plus two book reviews. The reviews on NGS and...

The authors revise some of the main areas of insect conservation in the context of the global climate change, such as the identification of the main drivers of insect species vulnerability, and also the role of protected areas to preserve insect diversity in future. From the discussion of some of the recent bibliography, some landmarks are identifi...

Networks of protected areas represent one of the main strategies to reduce the rapid loss of biodiversity. However, most of these protected areas have been designed by considering only charismatic groups of vertebrates and plants, most linked to terrestrial environments. Thus, little is known about how well protected areas perform in representing a...

Conservation interest of Ramsar wetlands in peninsular Spain according to their water beetle communities Abstract: We studied the aquatic Coleoptera communities of 71 wetlands designated as "Ramsar Wetlands" in peninsular Spain. It has been designed and applied the index ICC (Index of Conservation interest based on Coleoptera). This index uses crit...

Among the variety of Mediterranean aquatic habitats, inland saline ecosystems are considered particularly rare and have been much less studied than other freshwater systems. Previous research has emphasised the ecological and evolutionary singularity of these environments and their great conservation value, as they are extremely endangered and also...

Aim Invasion processes are probably better understood for birds than for any other taxon, thanks to detailed information available on deliberate introductions performed by Europeans when they colonized other continents. Little is known, however, about current avian introductions in developed countries, including Europe. Using an unprecedented datas...

The ESACIB (‘EScarabajos ACuáticos IBéricos’) database is provided, including all available distributional data of Iberian and Balearic water beetles from the literature up to 2013, as well as from museum and private collections, PhD theses, and other unpublished sources. The database contains 62,015 records with associated geographic data (10×10 k...

The impacts of unpredictable ecological perturbations are often assessed via measurements of environmental change only after the event has occurred. Temporal series of satellite images provide a cost-effective way to gather information before ecological perturbations occur. However, in previous studies, the disturbances have neither been always cen...

Protected area networks represent one of the mainstays of global conservation polices and are therefore central to current efforts to maintain biodiversity. However, a major limitation of most conservation strategies is their bias towards particular taxonomic groups and ecosystems, meaning that many taxa and habitats are often only incidentally pro...

Protected area networks represent one of the mainstays of worldwide conservation policies and play a key role in the protection of biodiversity. While numerous studies have evaluated the extent to which reserves fulfil their role of protecting biodiversity (so called ‘gap analysis’) in Europe at national and subnational scales, their performance ac...

One of the main issues in conservation biology is assessing how much biodiversity is currently represented in protected areas (PA). Traditional approaches such as ‘gap analysis’ require the choice of arbitrary targets and thresholds that can greatly influence the obtained results. We present here a complementary approach that avoids typical methodo...

In Europe, southern peninsulas served as major refugia during Pleistocene cold periods. However, growing evidence has revealed complex patterns of glacial survival within these southern regions, with multiple glacial refugia within each larger refugial area. We investigated the extent to which patterns of endemism and phylogeographic are concordant...

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Salinity is one of the most important drivers of the distribution, abundance and diversity of organisms. Previous studies on the evolution of saline tolerance have been mainly centred on marine and terrestrial organisms, while lineages inhabiting inland waters remain largely unexplored. This is despite the fact that these systems include a much bro...

Aim To assess the effectiveness of protected area networks in representing the climatic niche of Iberian water beetle species. Location Iberian Peninsula. Methods We used distribution data from 133 endemic water beetle species in the Iberian Peninsula. Climatic potential distributions were estimated by applying a multidimensional‐envelope procedu...

Arribas, P., Andújar, C., Sánchez-Fernández, D., Abellán, P. & Millán, A. (2012). Integrative taxonomy and conservation of cryptic beetles in the Mediterranean region (Hydrophilidae). —Zoologica Scripta, 00, 000–000. Because biodiversity inventory forms the basis for the effective conservation of species and habitats, there is an imperative need to...

El actual cambio climático constituye una de las principales amenazas para el futuro de la biodiversidad. A pesar de que recientemente se han realizado numerosos estudios evaluando los efectos del cambio climático sobre la biodiversidad, esta información apenas se ha traducido en propuestas de gestión concretas que permitan minimizar su impacto sob...

Ongoing global climate change presents serious challenges in conservation biology, forcing us to revisit previous tools and principles based on how species may respond to novel climatic conditions. There is currently a major gap between predictions of species vulnerability and management strategies, despite the fact that linking these areas is fund...

In Spain, national parks represent the mainstay of conservation polices and attempt to protect the most representative natural ecosystems. However, studies on the ecology and conservation of aquatic biodiversity within protected areas are still scarce. This study aimed at compiling an inventory of the macroinvertebrate families inhabiting the aquat...

Aim In aquatic ecosystems, standing (lentic) and running (lotic) waters differ fundamentally in their stability and persistence, shaping the comparative population genetic structure, geographical range size and speciation rates of lentic versus lotic lineages. While the drivers of this pattern remain incompletely understood, the suite of traits mak...

Aim We investigated the roles of lithology and climate in constraining the ranges of four co‐distributed species of Iberian saline‐habitat specialist water beetles ( Ochthebius glaber , Ochthebius notabilis , Enochrus falcarius and Nebrioporus baeticus ) across the late Quaternary and in shaping their geographical genetic structure. The aim was to...

RESUMEN En este estudio se pretende evaluar la efectividad de la Red de Parques Nacionales Peninsulares (RPNP) en la conservación de la biodiversidad acuática. Para ello se ha utilizado a los coleópteros acuáticos, un grupo de insectos con reconocido valor indicador. Se realizaron muestreos extensivos durante la pri-mavera y verano entre 2008 y 201...

Ultrametric trees for the different lineages. Numbers indicate node support: above nodes, Bayesian posterior probabilities (if above 0.5); below nodes, bootstrap support values from Maximum Likelihood analysis (if above 50%).

Data used in the study. Taxa included in the different studied lineages with data on geographic range properties and ecological attributes. Accession numbers of the sequences are also indicated.

Supplementary tables. Tables S1-S3.

Why some species are widespread while others are very restricted geographically is one of the most basic questions in biology, although it remains largely unanswered. This is particularly the case for groups of closely related species, which often display large differences in the size of the geographical range despite sharing many other factors due...

Historically, there has been considerable disagreement between researchers about the criteria used to discriminate among species. Decisions based on traditional morphological and genetic data alone can be potentially problematic, especially if the hypotheses are contradictory. Today, taxonomy is integrating new methods from different disciplines th...

Although the Segura River basin is located in one of Europe's most arid regions, it features a wide variety of aquatic ecosystems, some of which are rare within the European continent. Assemblages of aquatic Hemiptera and their indicator species in the Segura River basin, as well as the key environmental factors that determine their distribution, w...

This study updates current knowledge of the relationships and geographical distributions of the species from the genus Aphelocheirus in the Iberian Peninsula which, until now, have been involved in nomenclatural and taxonomic confusion. The morphological and molecular analyses presented in this study confirm the taxonomic validity of A. murcius and...

Good distribution maps based on adequate sampling of a number of taxonomic groups are required to provide reliable conservation strategies. Nevertheless, it is common that inventories of many animal groups, particularly insects, are incomplete or nonexistent, with large gaps appearing once all available information of insects is mapped, especially...

Aim To undertake a quantitative review of the Quaternary fossil record of European water beetles to evaluate their geographical and temporal coverage, and to characterize the extent and typology of the shifts in their geographical ranges. Location Europe. Methods We compiled Quaternary water beetle records from public databases and published refere...

It has been hypothesized that species living in small lentic water bodies, because of the short-term geological persistence of their habitat, should show higher dispersal ability, with increased gene flow among populations and a less pronounced phylogeographical structure. Conversely, lotic species, living in more geologically stable habitats, shou...

There is a widespread agreement that rates of biodiversity loss are greater in freshwater systems than in other ecosystems. To be able to protect adequately the freshwater biodiversity, it is crucial to know what species and habitats require greater conservation effort. In this study, we identify the most threatened species of water beetles from th...

Abstract. Analysis of the vulnerability of the aquatic beetles in the South Mediterranean side: the case of the Rif region (Morocco). There is a widespread agreement that rates of biodiversity loss are greater in freshwater systems than in other ecosystems. To be able to protect adequately the freshwater biodiversity, it is crucial to know what spe...

Los ecosistemas acuáticos salinos son especialmente habituales en las regiones de clima árido y semiárido del planeta. Así, en España, se concentran muchos de los ambientes salinos europeos. La salinidad supone un factor limitante, por ello es frecuente encontrar en estos medios una baja riqueza de grupos taxonómicos y especies. Sin embargo, los or...