Seminal plasma (SP) has been shown to modulate the female reproductive environment in mammalian species in which the ejaculate comes into direct contact with the endometrium, such as mice, pigs and horses. In contrast, cattle ejaculate in the vagina, and it is questionable whether the fluid portion reaches the uterus. A recent study from our group reported that mating to intact, but not vasectomised, bulls modifies the endometrium transcriptome. However, it is not clear whether...

Impacts of environmental stressors on food webs are often difficult to predict because trophic levels can respond in divergent ways, and biotic interactions may dampen or amplify responses. Here we studied food-web level impacts of urban wastewater pollution, a widespread source of degradation that can alter stream food webs via top-down and bottom-up processes. We selected ten pairs of sampling locations (i.e., twenty sites total) in ten small-to-medium tributaries of the Ebro River (NE Iberian...

1. Gradual climate change and discrete extreme climatic events have driven shifts in the structure of populations and the distribution of species in many marine ecosystems. The most profound impacts of recent warming trends have been generally observed at species’ warm edges and on large conspicuous species. However, given that different species and populations exhibit different responses to warming, and that responses are highly variable at regional scales, there is a need to broaden the...

Mediterranean islands have a high diversity of squamates, although they are unevenly distributed. This variability in the composition of the reptile assemblages across islands may have been influenced by differences in the colonization abilities of these species. To evaluate the dispersal capacities of squamate species, we modeled their sea routes using cost surface models. We estimated the effects of some life-history traits and the phylogenetic signal in the characteristics of the modeled dispersal paths. We...