La situació crítica de la llagosta vermella al Parc Natural del Montgrí, les Illes Medes i el Baix Ter

Al Parc Natural del Montgrí, les Illes Medes i el Baix Ter viu una de les espècies més preuades de la nostra mar: la llagosta vermella (Palinurus elephas). Objecte de captura de temps ençà, avui les seves poblacions es troben en una situació crítica. La ciència ha permès revelar aspectes rellevants de la biologia d’aquesta espècie: relació talla-edat, moviments, època de reproducció, ecologia dels exemplars juvenils, etc. Aquests coneixements haurien de servir per establir mesures de gestió adients per a la pesca responsable d’aquest decàpode, que s’haurien d'aplicar en l’àmbit local de manera urgent

Avaluació de la població de Corall (Corallium rubrum) de les Illes Medes. Exercici 2003

Podeu consultar l'Informe complet a: http://hdl.handle.net/2445/2367

Ordinary and Extraordinary Movement Behaviour of Small Resident Fish within a Mediterranean Marine Protected Area

It is important to account for the movement behaviour of fishes when designing effective marine protected areas (MPAs). Fish movements occur across different spatial and temporal scales and understanding the variety of movements is essential to make correct management decisions. This study describes in detail the movement patterns of an economically and commercially important species, Diplodus sargus, within a well-enforced Mediterranean MPA. We monitored horizontal and vertical movements of 41 adult individuals using passive acoustic telemetry for up to one year. We applied novel analysis and visualization techniques to get a comprehensive view of a wide range of movements. D. sargus individuals were highly territorial, moving within small home ranges ( 50 m), where they aggregated to spawn. This study advances our understanding about the functioning of an established MPA and provides important insights into the biology and management of a small sedentary species, suggesting the relevance of rare but important fish behaviours

Density estimation of the main structuring sessile species in underwater marine caves with a deep learning approach

Monitoring marine biodiversity is a challenge in some vulnerable and difficult-to-access habitats, such as underwater caves. Underwater caves are a great focus of biodiversity, concentrating a large number of species in their environment. However, most of the sessile species that live on the rocky walls are very vulnerable, and they are often threatened by different pressures. The use of these spaces as a destination for recreational divers can cause different impacts on the benthic habitat. In this work, we propose a methodology based on video recordings of cave walls and image analysis with deep learning algorithms to estimate the spatial density of structuring species in a study area. We propose a combination of automatic frame overlap detection, estimation of the actual extent of surface cover, and semantic segmentation of the main 10 species of corals and sponges to obtain species density maps. These maps can be the data source for monitoring biodiversity over time. In this paper, we analyzed the performance of three different semantic segmentation algorithms and backbones for this task and found that the Mask R-CNN model with the Xception101 backbone achieves the best accuracy, with an average segmentation accuracy of 82%.This work was supported by the Organismo Autónomo de Parques Nacionales, Ministerio para Figure 7. Relative abundance of species. 10 la Transición Ecológica y el Reto Demográfico, Gobierno de España, Project VirtualMAR (codes 2470-S/2017 and 2493-S/2017); by IP INTEMARES project (LIFE15 IPE/ES/000012); by the R+D project PID2019-107270RB-C21 (funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033); by Plan Nacional de I+D+I; and by Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII), Subdirección General de Redes y Centros de Investigación Cooperativa, Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades

Characterization of the MicroRNA Cargo of Extracellular Vesicles Isolated from a Pulmonary Tumor-Draining Vein Identifies miR-203a-3p as a Relapse Biomarker for Resected Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer.

In resected non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), post-surgical recurrence occurs in around 40% of patients, highlighting the necessity to identify relapse biomarkers. An analysis of the extracellular vesicle (EV) cargo from a pulmonary tumor-draining vein (TDV) can grant biomarker identification. We studied the pulmonary TDV EV-miRNAome to identify relapse biomarkers in a two-phase study (screening and validation). In the screening phase, a 17-miRNA relapse signature was identified in 18 selected patients by small RNAseq. The most expressed miRNA from the signature (EV-miR-203a-3p) was chosen for further validation. Pulmonary TDV EV-miR-203a-3p was studied by qRT-PCR in a validation cohort of 70 patients, where it was found to be upregulated in relapsed patients (p = 0.0194) and in patients with cancer spread to nearby lymph nodes (N+ patients) (p = 0.0396). The ROC curve analysis showed that TDV EV-miR-203a-3p was able to predict relapses with a sensitivity of 88% (AUC: 0.67; p = 0.022). Moreover, patients with high TDV EV-miR-203a-3p had a shorter time to relapse than patients with low levels (43.6 vs. 97.6 months; p = 0.00703). The multivariate analysis showed that EV-miR-203a-3p was an independent, predictive and prognostic post-surgical relapse biomarker. In conclusion, pulmonary TDV EV-miR-203a-3p is a promising new relapse biomarker for resected NSCLC patients

Monitoring HOTTIP levels on extracellular vesicles for predicting recurrence in surgical non-small cell lung cancer patients.

In resected non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), postsurgical recurrence is the major factor affecting long-term survival. The identification of biomarkers in extracellular vesicles (EV) obtained from serial blood samples after surgery could enhance early detection of relapse and improve NSCLC outcome. Since EV cargo contains long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), we aimed to analyze whether the oncogenic lncRNA HOTTIP, which higher expression in tumor tissue was related to worse outcome in NSCLC, could be detected in EV from NSCLC patients and serve as recurrence biomarker. After purification of EVs by ultracentrifugation in 52 serial samples from 18 NSCLC patients, RNA was isolated and HOTTIP was quantified by Real time PCR. We observed that patients that relapsed after surgery displayed increased postsurgical EV HOTTIP levels in comparison with presurgical levels. In the relapsed patients with several samples available between surgery and relapse, we observed an increment in the EV HOTTIP levels when approaching to relapse, which indicated its potential utility for monitoring disease recurrence. When we focused in EV HOTTIP levels in the first post-surgical sample, we observed that the detection of an increment of the expression levels in comparison to presurgical sample, predicted recurrence with high sensitivity (85.7%) and specificity (90.9%) and that patients had shorter time to relapse and shorter overall survival. In conclusion, our pilot study showed that EV HOTTIP is a potential biomarker for monitoring disease recurrence after surgery in NSCLC

Seguiment de la biodiversitat marina al Parc Natural de Cap de Creus i al Parc Natural del Montgrí, les Illes Medes i el Baix Ter. Informe 2014

Informe 2014. Contracte nº AG-2014-654 amb la Generalitat de Catalunya. Departament d‘Agricultura, Ramaderia, Pesca, Alimentació i Medi Natural. Servei d'Espais Naturals Protegits.Aquesta memòria presenta els resultats del grup de treball del Departament d’Ecologia de la UB respecte el seguiment de l’any 2014, tal i com consta al plec prescripcions expedient AG-2014-654, en compliment de la llei 19/1990 de 10 de desembre del Parlament de Catalunya, i amb les millores proposades a l’oferta tècnica Seguiment del medi marí als Parcs Naturals marins de Catalunya. Aquests resultats tenen l’objectiu d’avaluar les poblacions i hàbitats marins en relació tant amb les activitats humanes que hi tenen lloc com amb els factors ambientals; analitzar l’estat de les espècies i les comunitats, la seva evolució temporal i l’efecte que hi produeix la protecció, així com detectar altres situacions de risc pel patrimoni natural com podrien ser les espècies introduïdes o invasores o bé els possibles efectes del canvi climàtic

Seguiment del medi marí al Parc Natural del Cap de Creus i al Parc Natural del Montgrí, les Illes Medes i el Baix Ter. Memòria 2016

Aquesta memòria recull els resultats del grup de treball del Departament d’Ecologia de la Universitat de Barcelona relatiu al seguiment del medi marí al Parc Natural del Cap de Creus i al Parc Natural del Montgrí, les Illes Medes i el Baix Ter de l’any 2016, tal i com consta al plec de prescripcions amb expedient PTOP-2016-451 en compliment de la llei 19/1990 de 10 de desembre del Parlament de Catalunya, i amb les millores proposades a l’oferta tècnica homònima Els resultats dels treballs de camp tenen com a objectiu central l’avaluació de l’estat de les poblacions i dels hàbitats marins en relació tant amb les activitats humanes que es duen a terme als espais naturals estudiats com amb els factors ambientals. Així mateix s’analitza la seva evolució en el temps dels descriptors i s’intenta avaluar l’efecte de la protecció. El darrer objectiu és de detectar altres situacions de risc pel patrimoni natural com podrien ser l’arribada d’espècies alienes o invasores o bé els possibles efectes del canvi climàtic

Risk profiles and one-year outcomes of patients with newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation in India: Insights from the GARFIELD-AF Registry.

BACKGROUND: The Global Anticoagulant Registry in the FIELD-Atrial Fibrillation (GARFIELD-AF) is an ongoing prospective noninterventional registry, which is providing important information on the baseline characteristics, treatment patterns, and 1-year outcomes in patients with newly diagnosed non-valvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF). This report describes data from Indian patients recruited in this registry. METHODS AND RESULTS: A total of 52,014 patients with newly diagnosed AF were enrolled globally; of these, 1388 patients were recruited from 26 sites within India (2012-2016). In India, the mean age was 65.8 years at diagnosis of NVAF. Hypertension was the most prevalent risk factor for AF, present in 68.5% of patients from India and in 76.3% of patients globally (P < 0.001). Diabetes and coronary artery disease (CAD) were prevalent in 36.2% and 28.1% of patients as compared with global prevalence of 22.2% and 21.6%, respectively (P < 0.001 for both). Antiplatelet therapy was the most common antithrombotic treatment in India. With increasing stroke risk, however, patients were more likely to receive oral anticoagulant therapy [mainly vitamin K antagonist (VKA)], but average international normalized ratio (INR) was lower among Indian patients [median INR value 1.6 (interquartile range {IQR}: 1.3-2.3) versus 2.3 (IQR 1.8-2.8) (P < 0.001)]. Compared with other countries, patients from India had markedly higher rates of all-cause mortality [7.68 per 100 person-years (95% confidence interval 6.32-9.35) vs 4.34 (4.16-4.53), P < 0.0001], while rates of stroke/systemic embolism and major bleeding were lower after 1 year of follow-up. CONCLUSION: Compared to previously published registries from India, the GARFIELD-AF registry describes clinical profiles and outcomes in Indian patients with AF of a different etiology. The registry data show that compared to the rest of the world, Indian AF patients are younger in age and have more diabetes and CAD. Patients with a higher stroke risk are more likely to receive anticoagulation therapy with VKA but are underdosed compared with the global average in the GARFIELD-AF. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION-URL: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT01090362