The critically endangered Rüppell’s Vulture ( Gyps rueppelli ), originally from sub-Saharan Africa, has recently begun to establish itself in Europe, specifically in the Iberian Peninsula. This study focuses on understanding the spatial ecology of Rüppell’s Vultures during the breeding season, analyzing movement patterns and home-range sizes of three individuals tagged with GPS in southern Spain. The results show significant d...

In the Northern Alboran Sea, artisanal small-scale fisheries using trammel nets suffer economic losses, and local fishermen see their way-of-life endangered, due to interactions with wildlife species such as alien species and dolphins. On the one hand, the alien seaweed Rugulopteryx okamurae , which was first recorded in the Alboran Sea in 2015, has undergone an intensive expansion in the sub-region, monopolizing the available...

A classic issue in ecology is to understand how similar species coexist in a given area (i.e., sympatry). The situation of dolphins in the Western Mediterranean Sea may represent a special case of sympatry in that three similar species (the short-beaked common dolphin [Delphinus delphis], the striped dolphin [Stenella coeruleoalba], and the bottlenose dolphin [Tursiops truncatus) are under strong human impacts in the same area...

Aim As parapatric distributions are traditionally studied by pairs of species, this study aims to evaluate the causes of the maintenance of parapatry, specifically to assess whether the case of the three viper species present in the Iberian Peninsula is mainly caused by environmental conditions, historical events, interspecific competition among them, or a combination of these factors. Location The Iberian Peninsula. Taxon Vip...

Jellyfish swarms affect littoral ecosystems, are unpleasant for bathers and jeopardize coastal socio-economic sectors. Anticipating the incidence of jellyfish swarms could be useful for implementing preventive management measures. Macroclimatic indices are good candidates for this type of anticipation since they are macro-ecologically related to oceanographic characteristics that affect marine species after a certain time lag....

Aim The boundaries of species distributions are often shaped by natural barriers, such as mountains and rivers, but species distribution models usually fail to include these constraints. We tested several approaches that include barriers as explanatory variables in species distribution models. Location Africa and South America. Time period Current. Major taxa studied Primates. Methods We modelled the ranges of pairs of species...

Aim The use of atlas data in combination with a variety of modelling approaches has become a common practice in species distribution studies. The spatial extent over which species distribution models ( SDMs ) should be fitted (i.e. the spatial extent) is often arbitrary and coincides with the extent of the atlases. In order to develop reliable SDMs using species atlas data, we propose an approach that incorporates the taxonomy...

Aim A striking case of mitochondrial DNA (mt DNA ) introgression occurs in the Iberian Peninsula: the mt DNA of Lepus timidus , a species that inhabited this territory during the Last Glacial Maximum ( LGM ), is almost fixed in the Iberian range of Lepus europaeus , is very frequent in the northern half of Iberia within Lepus granatensis , and is fixed in Lepus castroviejoi . Here, we used a transdisciplinary approach to under...

Aim L epus castroviejoi and L epus corsicanus are sister species with allopatric distributions that share extensive phenotypic and genetic variation. Under the framework of niche conservatism, we assessed whether these species have similar ecological niches, which could provide insights into their mode of divergence, conservation, and taxonomic status. Location The distribution range of L. castroviejoi in the northern Iberian...

Placobdella costata is a leech specific to freshwater turtle Emys orbicularis. Both genera are native to North America and have co-evolved and undergone dispersion through the Palearctic. The leech is present throughout the Mediterranean area, always associated with E. orbicularis. Their only known presence in the Iberian Peninsula is in the north and center of the peninsula. Here we present the first description of the leech...

Aim To analyse a source of uncertainty when forecasting the possible effects of climate change on species distributions, which may appear when the species studied have doubtful taxonomy or are subdivided into subspecies with different environmental requirements. Location Mainland Spain. Methods Iberian newts ( Triturus pygmaeus and Triturus marmoratus , a recently identified species) were used as examples. Environmental favour...

Aim When faced with dichotomous events, such as the presence or absence of a species, discrimination capacity (the ability to separate the instances of presence from the instances of absence) is usually the only characteristic that is assessed in the evaluation of the performance of predictive models. Although neglected, calibration or reliability (how well the estimated probability of presence represents the observed proporti...

Aim The extent of the study area (geographical background, GB) can strongly affect the results of species distribution models (SDMs), but as yet we lack objective and practicable criteria for delimiting the appropriate GB. We propose an approach to this problem using trend surface analysis (TSA) and provide an assessment of the effects of varying GB extent on the performance of SDMs for four species. Location Mainland Spain. M...

Parapatry is a biogeographical term used to refer to organisms whose ranges do not overlap, but are immediately adjacent to each other; they only co‐occur – if at all – in a narrow contact zone. Often there are no environmental barriers in the contact zones, hence competitive interaction is usually advocated as the factor that modulates species distribution ranges. Even though the effects of climate change on species distribut...