Ph.D. defense !

Ana Payo-Payo from the GEP has defended her Ph.D, supervised by Prof. D. Oro, at the University of Barcelona. Well done Ana and Congratulations! (Next challenge : the Antartica, more information here)!

GSMs reveal movements of gulls between large islands

With the help of T. Muñoz from the GOB we equipped four breeding Yellow Legged gulls with GPS/GSM devices at Dragonera Regional Park.  The first tracks reveal unexpected large movements of one male between the main islands Mallorca and Ibiza.  More to come.

A work by the GEP selected for the virtual issue "Demography Behind the Population" (BES)

The work by Sanz-Aguilar et al. has been selected for the virtual issue Demography Behind the Population edited by the British Ecological Society. Read Ana's work here Well done Ana!

Prof. Oro on PAFS

Prof D. Oro interviewed by the national newspaper EL PAIS speaks about PAFS (Predictable Antrhopogenic Food Subsidies) and their role in animal ecology here.

Photo: G. Weinert (from www.ElPais.com)

Check also the revision published by him and the GEP in Ecology Letters here.

Intership at the GEP

Flore Mias, from the University of Toulouse, has joined the GEP for a 3-months intership. She will be investigating the movement pattern of the Balearic Wall Lizard. 
Welcome, Flore.

The GEP at the Multievent workshop held in the CEFE (CNRS)

New publication : surviving at high elevation !

Bastianelli, G., Tavecchia, G., Meléndez, L. Seoane, J., Obeso, J. R. and Laiolo, P. 2017.
Surviving at high elevations: an inter- and intra-specific analysis in a mountain bird community Oecologia doi:10.1007/s00442-017-3852-1

Photo: e.wikipedia.org

Abstract: Elevation represents an important selection agent on self-maintenance traits and correlated life histories in birds, but no study has analysed whether life-history variation along this environmental cline is consistent among and within species. In a sympatric community of passerines, we analysed how the average adult survival of 25 open-habitat species varied with their elevational distribution and how adult survival varied with elevation at the intra-specific level. For such purpose, we estimated intra-specific variation in adult survival in two mountainous species, the Water pipit (Anthus spinoletta) and the Northern wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe) in NW Spain, by means of capture–recapture analyses. At the inter-specific level, high-elevation species showed higher survival values than low elevation ones, likely because a greater allocation to self-maintenance permits species to persist in alpine environments.

Photo : larsfoto.es

At the intra-specific level, the magnitude of survival variation was lower by far. Nevertheless, Water pipit survival slightly decreased at high elevations, while the proportion of transient birds increased. In contrast, no such relationships were found in the Northern wheatear. Intra-specific analyses suggest that living at high elevation may be costly, such as for the Water pipit in our case study. Therefore, it seems that a species can persist with viable populations in uplands, where extrinsic mortality is high, by increasing the investment in self-maintenance and prospecting behaviours.