Tano Gutiérrez-Cánovas

King Juan Carlos University | URJC · Biology and Geology

Aim Macroecological studies have commonly used study‐specific subsets of taxa to calculate metrics of functional diversity (FD) and explore their spatial patterns. However, FD metrics can be biased if the functional space (FS) does not cover an extensive, common and representative range of trait variation. Here, we propose an overarching FS coverin...

The extent to which prey traits combine to influence the abundance of predators is still poorly understood, particularly for mixed predators in sympatry and in aquatic ecosystems. In this study, we characterise prey use and distribution in iconic bird (grey wagtails and Eurasian dippers) and fish species (brown trout and Atlantic salmon) to assess...

Investigating the influence of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning over environmental gradients is needed to anticipate ecosystem responses to global change. However, our understanding of the functional role of freshwater biodiversity, especially for microbes, is mainly based on manipulative experiments, where biodiversity and environmental varia...

Predicting the impacts of global change on highly dynamic ecosystems requires a better understanding of how communities respond to disturbance duration, frequency and timing. Intermittent rivers and ephemeral streams are dynamic ecosystems that are recognized as the most common fluvial ecosystem globally. The complexity of the drying process can gi...

Freshwater ecosystems are exposed to an increasing number of stressors, challenging their biomonitoring and management. Despite recent advances in multiple-stressor research, regional-scale assessments in areas with high freshwater biodiversity and increasing anthropogenic pressure are urgently needed. We reviewed 61 studies focused on freshwater i...

Different proxies for activity are used in the field of acoustic telemetry, a leading technology for the study of behaviour in the aquatic environment. Acoustic telemetry poses some shortcomings that may condition data interpretation. Here, we assessed some approaches commonly used to infer activity from acoustic telemetry data using acceleration b...

Environmental managers need information to quickly detect which stressor combinations should be addressed to reverse river degradation across large study areas. The pivotal role of riparian vegetation in regulating thermal regimes and inputs of light, nutrients and organic matter has made it a major target of stressor-mitigation and conservation ac...

The monitoring of biological indicators is required to assess the impacts of environmental policies, compare ecosystems and guide management and conservation actions. However, the growing availability of ecological data has not been accompanied by concomitant processing tools able to facilitate data handling and analysis. Multiple common challenges...

This study aims at understanding how observed inconsistencies in the response of biotic indicators to multiple stressors may result from different stressor gradient lengths being represented at different areas or temporal windows, either as the result of intrinsic natural causes or as the result of sampling bias. We simulated a pool of sites showin...

Intermittent rivers and ephemeral streams (IRES) compose the majority of draining networks on Earth, supporting a unique fraction of biodiversity. Despite their high ecological value, IRES are increasingly threatened by global change and require appropriate biomonitoring and restoration tools. However, indices and indicators used in routine biomoni...

River conservation efforts have traditionally focused on perennial watercourses (which do not dry) and their associated aquatic biodiversity. However, most of the global river network is non‐perennial (i.e. dries at some point) and thus supports both aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity. Here, we assessed the conservation value of non‐perennial riv...

Water availability is a fundamental driver of biogeochemical processing in highly dynamic ecosystems such as intermittent rivers and ephemeral streams (IRES), which are recognized as the most common fluvial ecosystem globally. Because of their global extent, IRES have a remarkable contribution to organic matter processing, which is expected to inte...

Water availability is a fundamental driver of biogeochemical processing in highly dynamic freshwater ecosystems. Recent evidence demonstrates that flow disruption influences biogeochemical cycles globally, given the wide distribution of watercourses exposed to episodic drying. The complexity of the drying process can give rise to different annual a...

Conferences are ideal platforms for studying gender gaps in science because they are important cultural events that reflect barriers to women in academia. Here, we explored women’s participation in ecology conferences by analyzing female representation, behavior, and personal experience at the 1st Meeting of the Iberian Society of Ecology (SIBECOL)...

Species assemblages often have a non‐random nested organization, which in vertebrate scavenger (carrion‐consuming) assemblages is thought to be driven by facilitation in competitive environments. However, not all scavenger species play the same role in maintaining assemblage structure, as some species are obligate scavengers (i.e., vultures) and ot...

Rivers are dynamic ecosystems in which both human impacts and climate‐driven drying events are increasingly common. These anthropogenic and natural stressors interact to influence the biodiversity and functioning of river ecosystems. Disentangling ecological responses to these interacting stressors is necessary to guide management actions that supp...

1. The description of how biological information is compiled over time is essential to detect temporal biases in biodiversity data that could directly influence the utility, comparability, and reliability of ecological and biogeographical studies. 2. We explore trends in species recording over time using one of the most spatially and temporally com...

Riparian areas in the Cantabrian Atlantic ecoregion (northwest Portugal) play a key role in soil formation and conservation, regulation of nutrient and water cycle, creation of landscape aesthetic value and the preservation of biodiversity. The maintenance of their ecological integrity is crucial given the ever increase in multiple anthropogenic (w...

Despite advances in conceptual understanding, single-stressor abatement approaches remain common in the management of fresh waters, even though they can produce unexpected ecological responses when multiple stressors interact. Here we identify limitations restricting the development of multiple-stressor management strategies and address these, brid...

Aim Changes in land use and cover (hereafter land use) affect freshwater ecosystems at different spatial scales. We tested the effects of land use on the dispersal capacity of stream macroinvertebrates through local and regional processes. Location In all, 183 Brazilian headwater stream sites, located in the Neotropical Savanna with variable land...

Dispersal is an essential process in population and community dynamics, but is difficult to measure in the field. In freshwater ecosystems, information on biological traits related to organisms' morphology, life history and behaviour provides useful dispersal proxies, but information remains scattered or unpublished for many taxa. We compiled infor...

Climate and land-use change drive a suite of stressors that shape ecosystems and interact to yield complex ecological responses, i.e. additive, antagonistic and synergistic effects. Currently we know little about the spatial scale relevant for the outcome of such interactions and about effect sizes. This knowledge gap needs to be filled to underpin...

Aim To analyse temporal metacommunity dynamics in river networks in relation to hydrological conditions and dispersal. Location Fifteen river reaches from the Llobregat, Besòs and Foix catchments in the North‐Eastern Iberian Peninsula. Taxon Aquatic macroinvertebrates belonging to 99 different families. Methods We sampled aquatic macroinvertebra...

Vertebrate scavenger communities vary in species composition across the globe. They include a wide array of species with diverse ecological strategies and life‐histories that support essential ecosystem functions, such as carrion removal. While previous studies have mostly focussed on how community aspects such as species richness and composition a...

Concern for megafauna is increasing among scientists and non-scientists. Many studies have emphasized that megafauna play prominent ecological roles and provide important ecosystem services to humanity. But, what precisely are ‘megafauna’? Here, we critically assess the concept of megafauna and propose a goal-oriented framework for megafaunal resea...

Land-use intensification (LUI) and biological invasions are two of the most important global change pressures driving biodiversity loss. However, their combined impacts on biological communities have been seldom explored, which may result in misleading ecological assessments or mitigation actions. Based on an extensive field survey of 445 paired in...

Motivation: Dispersal is an essential process in population and community dynamics but is difficult to measure in the field. In freshwater systems, relevant information on the dispersal of many taxa remains scattered or unpublished, and biological traits related to organisms morphology, life history and behaviour offer useful dispersal proxies. We...

Vertebrate scavenger communities vary in species composition across the globe, and include a wide array of species with diverse ecological strategies and life-histories that support essential ecosystem functions, such as carrion removal. While previous studies have mostly focussed on how community aspects such as species richness and composition af...

Hydrology is the main driver of dissolved organic matter (DOM) dynamics in intermittent rivers and ephemeral streams. However, it is still unclear how the timing and the spatial variation in flow connectivity affect the dynamics of DOM and inorganic solutes. This study focuses on the impact of flow cessation on the temporal and spatial heterogeneit...

Ecosystems experience natural disturbances and anthropogenic impacts that affect biological communities and ecological processes. When natural disturbance modifies anthropogenic impacts, current widely used bioassessment metrics can prevent accurate assessment of biological quality. Our aim was to assess the ability of biomonitoring metrics to dete...

The microbial decomposition of organic matter is a fundamental ecosystem process that transforms organic matter and fuels detritus-based food webs, influencing biogeochemical cycles such as C-cycling. The efficiency of this process can be compromised during the non-flow periods of intermittent and ephemeral streams (IRES). When water flow ceases, s...

1. Climate change is expected to produce shifts in species distributions as well as behavioural, life-history, and/or morphological adaptations to find suitable conditions or cope with the altered environment. Most of our knowledge on this issue comes from studies on vertebrates, mainly endotherm species. However, it remains uncertain how small ect...

Cuando hacemos modelos ecológicos, normalmente nos interesa conocer la importancia y el efecto de una serie de variables potencialmente explicativas en una variable respuesta de interés. Tradicionalmente, la estrategia escogida por muchos ecólogos ha sido la de contrastar nuestro modelo con una hipótesis nula o la de añadir o quitar variables expli...

Question Do invasions by alien plant species with contrasting trait profiles (Arctotheca calendula, Carpobrotus spp., Conyza bonariensis and Opuntia dillenii) change the functional and phylogenetic structure of coastal plant communities?. Location Atlantic coastal habitats in Huelva (Spain). Methods We identified species diversity and composition...

Under global change, the ion concentration of aquatic ecosystems is changing worldwide. Many freshwater ecosystems are being salinized by anthropogenic salt inputs, whereas many naturally saline ones are being diluted by agricultural drainages. This occurs concomitantly with changes in other stressors, which can result in additive, antagonistic or...

Lista de revisores de la revista ECOSISTEMAS durante el bienio Lista de revisores que han completado revisiones durante el bienio 2019-2020. La labor de los revisores es fundamental para que una publicación científica realice su actividad de manera adecuada y cumpla con sus objetivos de calidad. Todos estos investigadores contribuyeron generosament...

Abiotic stress shapes how communities assemble and support ecological functions. However, it remains unclear whether artificially increasing or decreasing stress levels would lead to communities assembling predictably along a single axis of variation or along multiple context-dependent trajectories of change. In response to stress intensity alterat...

Considering how organisms adapt to stress is essential if we are to anticipate biological responses to global change in ecosystems. Communities in stressful environments can potentially be assembled by specialists (i.e. species that only occur in a limited range of environmental conditions) and/or generalist species with wider environmental toleran...

Naturally stressed ecosystems hold a unique fraction of biodiversity. However, they have been largely ignored in biomonitoring and conservation programmes, such as the EU Water Framework Directive, while global change pressures are threatening their singular values. Herewe present a framework to classify and evaluate the ecological quality of natur...

Multiple abiotic stressors affect the ecological status of water bodies. The status of waterbodies in the Ebro catchment (NE Spain) is evaluated using the biological quality elements (BQEs) of diatoms, invertebrates and macrophytes. The multi-stressor influence on the three BQEs was evaluated using the monitoring dataset available from the catchmen...

Rivers are among the most sensitive of all ecosystems to the effects of global change, but options to prevent, mitigate or restore ecosystem damage are still inadequately understood. Riparian buffers are widely advocated as a cost-effective option to manage impacts, but empirical evidence is yet to identify ideal riparian features (e.g. width, leng...

In the previous report (D4.1, September 2016) we have developed predictive linkages between indicators of environmental quality and ecosystem services, and different types of pressures, single or multiple, across river basins from all over Europe, in a latitudinal and a west-east gradient, and having very different conditions of climate and land us...

Biological invasions have become one of the most important drivers of biodiversity loss and ecosystem change worldwide. However, it is still unclear how invasions may interact with local abiotic stressors, which are expected to increase as global change intensifies. Furthermore, we know little about the response to biological invasions of insects,...

Deliverable D4.1 is a synthesis report of the 16 regional case studies being undertaken in WP4 (Multi-stressors at the river basin scale. The report is composed of 3 parts. Part 1: Task 4.2 - Southern Basins region Part 1 reports the background to, and results and conclusions from Task 4.2 on four case studies from the Southern Basins region. The...

There is an urgent need to track how natural systems are responding to global change in order to better guide management efforts. Traditionally, taxonomically based metrics have been used as indicators of ecosystem integrity and conservation status. However, functional approaches offer promising advantages that can improve bioassessment performance...

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...

Understanding and predicting ecosystem responses to multiple environmental pressures is a long-standing interest in ecology and environmental management. However, few studies have examined how the functional features of freshwater biological communities vary along multiple gradients of environmental stress. Furthermore, modelling these functional f...

The effect of stressors on biodiversity can vary in relation to the degree to which biological communities have adapted over evolutionary time. We compared the responses of functional features of stream insect communities along chronic stress gradients with contrasting time persistence. Water salinity and land-use intensification were used as examp...

This thesis analyses the effects of natural and anthropogenic stressors on ecosystems using stream macroinvertebrates and primary producers as model organisms, and water salinity and land-use intensification as examples of natural and anthropogenic stressors, respectively. Chapters 1, 2 and 3 are focussed on the development of structural and functi...

Educar aprendiendo de la naturaleza

AIM: We hypothesised that mechanisms underlying beta-diversity in rivers would differ between gradients where i) natural stressors result in progressive species turnover with high specificity and ii) anthropogenic stressors result in the loss of specialist taxa thus giving rise to nestedness. LOCATION: Great Britain, Iberian Peninsula and the Himal...

The investigation of flow–ecology relationships constitutes the basis for the development of environmental flow criteria. The need to understand hydrology–ecology linkages in natural systems has increased owing to the prospect of climate change and flow regime management, especially in water-scarce areas such as Mediterranean basins. Our research q...