New Master course : Biodiversity in Tropical Areas and its Conservation

Dr. P. Santidrian from the GEP is teaching at the new Master in Biodiversity in Tropical Areas and its Conservation. The Master is a joint project by CSIC and UIMP. Practicals will be carried out at the Pacuare Natural Reserve in Costa Rica.

Ph.D. defense !

Andreu Rotger has
successfully defended his Ph.D. Thesis titled "Evolutionary Ecology of the Balearic Wall Lizard Podarcis lilfordi" at the University of Barcelona the 30th of November. Visca Andreu ! (Dr. Rotger from now).

Audouin 's gull movements: The book !

New book on Audouin's gull spatial ecology

Monograph published by SEO/BIRDLIFE

Just hot off the presses, the monograph is an up-to-date study about the spatial ecology and migration of the Audouin’s gull, by exploiting radio-tracking data collected by SEO/BirdLife combined with more than 63000 ring resights performed by GEP corresponding to more than 45000 chicks ringed over the years. The book includes many figures and maps elaborated using information from those resights and GPS and satellite tracking data from several colonies in the Spanish Mediterranean. The publication largely contributes to understanding the phenology and spatio-temporal distribution patterns of the species across the year, including its migration routes. The text is in Spanish with an English summary. Last but not least, do not miss the nice pictures included! You can have a look at the pdf freely available here:

http://www.seo.org/boletin/seguimiento/migracion/01_gaviota_audouin/

The Capture-Recapture-Recovery Workshop 2016 has ended : see you next year !

The introductory course on “CAPTURE-RECAPTURE AND CAPTURE–RECOVERY ANALYSIS FOR THE STUDY OF ANIMAL POPULATIONS” has ended. 
It has been an occasion to share thoeretical and practical aspects of CMR analyses, to learn about snails, feral cats, tropical frogs & Co.  See you next year, last week of November! (visit also our facebook page)

Gull Shopping

Photo: Björn Marten Philipps

Björn Marten Philipps from the Wadden Sea Conservation Station was visiting Palma when bumped into our GSM/GPS equipped gull shopping and scavenging at the Mercat de l'Olivar. 

Thank you very much for the picture, Björn! 

G.E.P. at IZW in Berlin

Ana Sanz-Aguilar has been invited to present her work on Estimating Recruitment and Survival in partially-monitored population at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin. 

Profesionales abstrusos, modelos complejos y conservación

La relación entre gestores de la conservación y académicos

Hace unos meses Joan Mayol, en uno de sus ensayos que regularmente publica en Quercus, afirmaba que "la conservación de la naturaleza le debe mucho a gente como Julio Verne, Emilio Salgari, Jack London o Miguel Delibes, mucho más que a algunos profesionales abstrusos que diseñan complejos modelos que les permiten pontificar y pretender elevarse sobre el común de los mortales". Anoto aquí que abstruso, según la RAE, significa "De difícil comprensión". Yo soy muy poco corporativista, pero me molestó tanto eso del "pontificar y pretender elevarse sobre el común de los mortales" que decidí escribir una réplica al Quercus, que aparece aquí abajo. Muchos académicos no somos pontífices, ni pretendemos elevarnos por encima de nadie. Y aquí me paro que me embalo.

G.E.P. at "I ´m a scientist, get me out of here!"

A. Payo-Payo will take part to the "I´m a scientist, get me out of here!" . It is a free online event where school students meet and interact with scientists. 

It’s an X Factor-style competition between scientists, where the students are the judges. Ana Payo-Payo will face other 20 scientists and respond to hig-school students questions over fast-paced online text-based liveCHATs. She will have to answer anything they want, and try to become their favourite. Will she manage to show them how cool are gulls and win a prize of £500 to communicate her  work to the general public.G-ull luck, Ana!!!

Workshop on Distance Sampling with the "Servei de Caça"

A. Rotger and G. Tavecchia organized a workshop on Distance Sampling techniques for the "Servei de Caça" of the "Consell de Mallorca". It has been very interesting to exchange ideas in game species monitoring. A nice interaction between theory and practice.

G.E.P. at the MUSE

A. Sanz-Aguilar, from the GEP, visited the Museo delle Scienze di Trento (Italy) with a Short Term Scientific Mission funded by EU COST Action ES1304, the ParrotNet European network of scientists, practitioners and policy-makers dedicated to research on invasive parrots, their impacts and the challenges they present. During 1 month at the MUSE, Ana will collaborate with Dr. Simone Tenan evaluating the population dynamics of the rose-ringed parakeet across Europe.

G.E.P. at the XIV Iberian Congress of Herpetology

A. Rotger presented part of his Ph.D. thesis at the XIV Iberian Congress of Herpetology

with a contribution titled "Contrasting size-dependent life history strategies in female Balearic Wall lizards (Podarcis lilfordi) from insular close populations".

He will defend his work the 30th of November at the University of Barcelona

G.E.P. at the Internation Albatross and Petrel Conference

This year’s IAPC conference was hosted by the Department of Animal Biology at the University of Barcelona. It was a great 5-day conference which brought together old and new friends.

An happy Dani surrounded by almost all his present and past PhD Students!

The conference was a success. We got the opportunity to share our research, listen to exceptional speakers and take part in exciting debates. Prof. D. Oro was a keynote speaker and opened the demography session (see his contribution here). Dr. A. Sanz-Aguilar presented her work on the role of immigration in rescuing a Scopoli’s Shearwater colony. Ana Payo-Payo presented her work on the effects of termination of supplementary feeding on the ecological synchronization of marine top predators. We are looking forward to attend to the next one!