Paulo’s PhD thesis

Paulo’s PhD thesis

Paulo R. Guimarães Jr. defended his PhD thesis at University of Campinas, Brazil. He has worked on plant-animal interaction networks from a theoretical perspective, addressing connectivity patterns, the origin of truncation in the connectivity distributions, nestedness patterns and the structure of ant-plant and fish-cleaning interactions in comparison with other mutualisms. He has been advised by Sérgio Furtado Dos Reis, Marcus Aguiar, Jordi Bascompte and myself. It has been a privilege to work with Paulo in this project.

Joel Cohen visit

This week we had the pleasure of having Joel Cohen visiting us. Invited by Jordi, he was discussing work with different people, and gave an interesting talk. We visited Doñana natl. park and the Los Alcornocales area.

EURYI Awards in Stockholm

EURYI Awards in Stockholm

We went to Stockholm for the EURYI Award ceremony, which took place during the Open Science Forum 2004. There were six spanish scientists awarded. Here are a couple of shots of the ceremony, and Jordi with the certificate of the prize. Very nice moments for all us, and it’s a pleasure to share them with all you.

Visitors form INIA group and great discussion

Today we had a great visit: Peter Smouse and Fréderic Austerlitz with the group at INIA, including Ricardo Alía, Santiago C. González-Martínez, Juanjo Robledo-Arnuncio and María Valbuena Carabaña. We were discussing for the whole day about gene flow estimates for pollen and seed dispersal in woody species. We presented our ongoing research as brief talks (on our part, Godo, Cris, Jordi and myself) and fantastic discussion.

John Sabo and Leah Gerber with us

John and Leah are just arrived in Sevilla. They’ll be with us for 6 weeks, collaborating chiefly with Jordi.

Acorns

Acorns

I’ve started a collaboration with José María Gómez (Rocka) to study dispersal patterns of Quercus ilex acorns by jays Garrulus glandarius and mice Apodemus sylvaticus. We’ll be using microsatellite markers and our goal at this moment is just startup and select the markers and test them. For that we’ll be using samples of cached acorns for which Rocka has a good record of the foraging patterns of the jays and mice. The project is a 1-yr study and is integrated in a larger project carried out by Rocka and Geno Schupp.

Visit: Mauro

Mauro Galetti visiting Sevilla

Mauro Galetti is visiting us during March. We will be working on collaboration projects with fleshy fruits characteristics, specifically with Mata Atlantica species. We are also preparing the next frugivory and seed dispersal course in Brazil for next May-June. Our collaboration now has support from a bilateral agreement between Brazilian CNPq and Spanish CSIC. You can find more details about our shared interest in the web page.

A symposium at Univ. Aarhus, Denmark: networks, interactions, islands

A symposium at Univ. Aarhus, Denmark: networks, interactions, islands

Jens M. Olesen is organizing a symposium “Mother Nature: networks, interactions, islands” for next March 2004 at Aarhus Univ., Dept. Ecology and Genetics. This is a 2-d meeting with exciting talks and discussion, the invited speakers including: Scott Armbruster, Jordi Bascompte, Lars Chittka, Joel Cohen, Yoko Dupont, Bodil Ehlers, Manuel Nogales, Ophelie Ronce, John N. Thompson, Anna Traveset, and Alfredo Valido. I’ll be there too…

Alfredo Valido joins IEG with a post-doc position

Alfredo Valido will join our group, starting Jan 2004, with a post-doc Marie Curie Fellowship from the EU and an i3P contract from CSIC. These grants are for a 3-yr period. We’ll be doing research on Canary Island fleshy fruits and seed dispersers, chiefly comparisons of fruit traits of congeners in the islands and the Iberian Peninsula. We are planning a major update for the FRUBASE database, and additional research on dispersal patterns by Canary Island giant lizards.

Megafauna

Photos of megafauna fruits

Go here if you want a view of megafauna fruits photos . These were taken by Mauro Galetti and me at the Museo Goeldi Herbarium (Belem, Brazil) and correspond to species we analyzed in our ongoing project on megafauna fruits.

Phylogeography of Frangula alnus

Phylogeography of Frangula alnus

Our manuscript “Hampe, A., J. Arroyo, P. Jordano, and R.J. Petit. 2003. Rangewide phylogeography of a bird-dispersed Eurasian shrub: contrasting Mediterranean and temperate glacial refugia” is now tentatively accepted for Molecular Ecology vol. 12, pending minor changes.

New research projects for the next 3 years

New research projects for the next 3 years

Both Jordi and myself just received the approval of our new projects for the next 3 years by the spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnologia. This is great news. These projects will keep our two main research lines on landscape patterns of gene flow via seed dispersal by frugivorous animals and on complex networks of interaction (food webs and mutualistic, plant-animal interaction webs).

Collaborative project CSIC-CNPq with Brazil

We just received approval for a collaborative project with Mauro Galetti (UNESP, Rio Claro, Brazil), as a part of the agreement between the spanish CSIC and brazilian CNPq for years 2004-2005. We’ll focus on palm seed dispersal ecology, megafauna fruits, and comparisons of fruit-frugivore communities and keystone species characteristics in neotropical and Mediterranean habitats. It’s going to be great fun.

Collaborative project CSIC-CNPq with Brazil

We just received approval for a collaborative project with Mauro Galetti (UNESP, Rio Claro, Brazil), as a part of the agreement between the spanish CSIC and brazilian CNPq for years 2004-2005. We’ll focus on palm seed dispersal ecology, megafauna fruits, and comparisons of fruit-frugivore communities and keystone species characteristics in neotropical and Mediterranean habitats. It’s going to be great fun.