We received the visit from the researcher Alex Milcu, who is the director the CNRS Ecotron of Montpellier and researcher at the CNRS, Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive (France).

He is an ecosystem ecologist working on the consequences of biodiversity loss and climate change on the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems.

In this talk, he presented the capabilities of advanced controlled environment facilities for ecosystem research (Ecotrons). ECOTRONS are of great interest because they have the capacity to simultaneously control environmental conditions while allowing for ecosystem-level measurements of carbon and water fluxes.

We also received a visit from the researcher Mar Sobral, and we are sure that new ideas and projects will come out of these meetings.

Postdoctoral researcher Violette Chiara, a member of the GEA group (University of Vigo’s Animal Ecology Group), visited our lab. She gave us a talk on “How do social spiders achieve synchronization during collective hunting?” based on her latest paper “A variable refractory period increases collective performance in noisy environments“. 

This week we visited the Estación de Ciencias Mariñas de Toralla (ECIMAT) facilities. The person who guided us on the visit was José González, Head of the Oceanography Unit.

We were also accompanied on this visit by postdoctoral researcher Pedro Beca Carretero who is working at the Instituto de Investigaciones Mariñas – CSIC in Vigo.

A new paper is out! Maraísa Resende Braga studied how birds from the family Tyrannidae might be impacted by the ongoing climate change.

Results suggest that tropical and temperate species would suffer from different stressors. Neotropical austral migrant species would lose part of their breeding ranges, while Nearctic-Neotropical species would need to fly long distances to reach the same climatic conditions of their current breeding ranges.

Resende Braga, M., Jorge, L.R., Jahn, A.E., Loyola, R. and Varela, S. 2022. Future climate change will impact the migration of New World migrant flycatchers (Tyrannidae). Ornithol. Res. 30, 63–74 10.1007/s43388-022-00081-6 

Illustration by @CireniaSketches

MAPAS ID: 947921 ERC research project supports #WatchOutStickyFloor #OJOSueloPegajoso campaign together with the Asociación Espalola de Ecología Terrestre (AEET) for the International Women’s Day.

Discover more about the campaign in our outreach section.

Art by @CireniaSketches

We are pleased to be part of the new paper published in Historical Biology, a work dedicated to the palaeontologist Jorge Morales.

A macroevolutionary study published in Historical Biology and led by professor Manuel Hernández Fernández (UCM, IGEO) from the PMMV team who invited us to participate entitled “Macroevolution and climate changes: a global multi-family test supports the resource-use hypothesis in terrestrial mammals”

The link for the paper is available in our Research section.

We had a guest visitor at our lab. Today Borja Jimenez Alfaro, from the Research Unit of Biodiversity (CSIC, Uni Oviedo, Asturias) talking about biodiversity up in the mountains.

We are delighted to welcome Lucas Buffanat at the MapasLab, a Master’s student from l’École Normale Supérieure de Lyon who start a short stay with us. #WelcomeToMapasLab!

The press reports the new study published by our member Lewis Jones entitled: “Uneven spatial sampling distorts reconstructions of Phanerozoic seawater temperature“: Press release

You can access the article here.

The new paper published by our team member Sofía Galván has been released today  https://www.ardeola.org/es/volumenes/691/articulos/97-114/

Check this post about the research published by our team member Alessandro Chiarenza published on Nature Portfolio Ecology and Evolution Community website.

You can also check the open-access paper in Scientific Reports here.

Our team member Alessandro Chiarenza participate in a seminar talking about dinosaur macroevolution and also got the chance to talk about our lab!

Our team member Sofía Galván has been teaching at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in the Master’s degree in Zoology, in the subject of Methods in Zoological Research with Professor Rafa Barrientos.

Our team member Lewis A. Jones participated in organizing the International Fossil Coral and Reef Society Early Career Researcher Symposium. The meeting will be online and take place on October 15th.

Our PI Sara Varela will run one of the workshops at CPEGBerlin

9th September – Workshop: Mapping past species distributions

https://www.cpegberlin.com/program.html

https://twitter.com/MapasLab/status/1410897299421777921

Sara Varela joins the conference “Unha carreira científica en desigualdade” organized by GCiencia and Deputación de Pontevedra.

https://www.facebook.com/CienciaG/videos/ciencia-en-feminino-unha-carreira-cient%C3%ADfica-en-desigualdade/275302700739309/

https://cim.uvigo.gal/en/2021/03/sara-varela-researcher-funded-by-the-european-research-council-will-join-the-cim/

https://www.gciencia.com/ciencia/sara-varela-estuda-a-evolucion-nos-ultimos-540-millons-de-anos/

https://www.uvigo.gal/universidade/comunicacion/duvi/sara-varela-incorporase-uvigo-cunha-nova-lina-investigacion-os-procesos-evolucion-extincion-ultimos

https://www.atlantico.net/articulo/vigo/biologa-investigadora-sara-varela-reincorpora-uvigo/20210310223453826779.html

Sara Varela and Mar Sobral present a virtual celebration of science, where 15 biologists  tell us about a female scientist who has influenced them in their career

https://natureecoevocommunity.nature.com/posts/international-women-s-day-2021