Evolución morfológica y ecológica de Sciuridae (Rodentia, Mammalia) durante el Cenozoico: relación con cambios climáticos globales

Squirrels are a highly diverse and widely distributed rodent family (Sciuridae), with nearly 300 species inhabiting all terrestrial biomes in the world and almost all the continents (the only exceptions being Antarctica and Australia). Also, their fossil record is well studied from their origin around 40 Myr ago, which makes them a well-suited group to study broadscale patterns of evolution with a deep-time perspective. The general aim of this doctoral thesis is to integrate phylogenetic, paleontological, morphological, and ecological information to identify the drivers of squirrels’evolution. Using recently developed methodological approaches, this thesis investigates the macroecological patterns and morphological evolution in relation to changes in the environmental conditions. In order to combine morphological data from extinct and extant species, and considering that most of the known fossil record of squirrels consists on isolated teeth, this thesis focuses on the study of morphological evolution of teeth. Particularly, the fourth lower premolar (p4), which shows interspecific morphological variation..

From our project to our school library

RESUMEN: La biblioteca escolar juega un papel muy importante dentro del centro escolar. No debemos considerarla únicamente como un espacio independiente, relacionado con un servicio opcional y complementario a las tareas docentes en el que, se almacena una colección de libros más o menos organizada y en donde los alumnos acuden a realizar sus tareas. Una nueva cosmovisión pide a gritos llegar para quedarse y cambiar el concepto que se tiene de la biblioteca en la gran mayoría de colegios. Dada la importancia que tiene concebir la biblioteca como un espacio propicio para mejorar el proceso de aprendizaje del alumno, para complementar la labor docente y para ser un espacio dinamizador de recursos, los objetivos de este trabajo van encaminados a ofrecer sugerencias y orientaciones para organizar coherentemente y poner en marcha una biblioteca escolar que sea útil y eficaz. Para ello, a lo largo de este estudio, se trabajará la creación y la puesta en funcionamiento de una biblioteca a partir de un proyecto innovador en el CEIP Marina de Cudeyo.ABSTRACT: The school library plays a very important role inside the school. We shouldn’t consider it solely as an independent space, related to an optional service and complementary to the teaching tasks in which, a less or more organized collection of books is stored and where students come to perform their tasks. A new worldview needs to stay and change the concept of the library in most of schools. Due the importance of conceiving the library as a favorable space to improve the student's learning process, to complement the teaching work and to be a space for the resource facilitator, the objectives of this work are aimed at offering suggestions and guidelines to organize coherently and launch a school library that is useful and effective. To this end, throughout this study, we will work on the creation and implementation of a library based on an innovative project on the CEIP Marina de Cudeyo.Grado en Magisterio en Educación Primari

El Gran Intercambio Biótico Americano: una revisión paleoambiental de evidencias aportadas por mamíferos y aves neotropicales

Tradicionalmente, se ha considerado que la formación del istmo de Panamá (durante el Plioceno hace 3 Ma) facilitó el movimiento de especies entre Sudamérica y Norteamérica. Este proceso ecológico y evolutivo denominado Gran Intercambio Biótico Americano (GABI) es determinante en la configuración de la biota americana actual. Aunque el GABI comenzó a estudiarse principalmente a partir del registro fósil de diversos grupos (especialmente mamíferos), el conocimiento actual de las especies derivado de estudios biogeográficos, filogenéticos, y de un sustancial incremento del registro fósil, así como el aumento significativo del conocimiento geológico de la región, han permitido plantear escenarios donde el GABI adquiere una mayor complejidad y suguieren un panorama de menor aislamiento para Sudamérica durante el Cenozoico. Las evidencias y estudios más recientes en aves y mamíferos apuntan a múltiples procesos de colonización desde finales del Oligoceno con la entrada de algunos grupos de aves y durante el Mioceno con la colonización de algunos taxones de ambos grupos, eventos que serían previos a lo que habitualmente se ha considerado para el proceso de intercambio. El GABI plenamente establecido, se constituye de 4 fases a lo largo del Plio-Pleistoceno, en cada una de éstas, se presentarón diferentes oleadas de colonización de linajes entre ambos continentes. Asimismo, durante el Pleistoceno-Holoceno se evidenciaron diversos procesos de extinción de especies, la explicación de cuáles fueron los factores determinantes en estos procesos han sido causa de debate, por lo que se discute el estado de la cuestión, mostrando a través de la evidencia cómo se presenta un importante cambio de paradigma con explicaciones basadas en la relevancia de los factores paleogeográficos y los cambios ambientales en los procesos de adaptación biómica, abandonando la clasida idea de la competencia ecológica entre especies norteñas y sureñas. En conclusión, el proceso resulta ser un entramado complejo de interacciónes bióticas condicionadas principalmente por factores abióticos cambiantes acaecidos durante el proceso de configuración paleoambiental de las américas

Phylogenetic biome conservatism as a key concept for an integrative understanding of evolutionary history: Galliformes and Falconiformes as study cases

Biomes are climatically and biotically distinctive macroecological units that formed over geological time scales. Their features consolidate them as ‘evolutionary scenarios’, with their own diversification dynamics. Under the concept of phylogenetic niche conservatism, we assessed, for the first time, the evolution of biome occupation in birds. We aimed to analyse patterns of adaptation to different climatic regimes and the determinant factors for colonization of emerging biomes by clades from different ancestral biomes. In this work, we reconstructed the biome occupation history of two clades of birds (Galliformes and Falconiformes) under an integrative perspective through a comprehensive review of ecological, phylogenetic, palaeontological and biogeographical evidence. Our findings for both groups are consistent with a scenario of phylogenetic biome conservatism and highlight the importance of changes in climate during the Miocene in the adaptation and evolution of climatic niches. In particular, our results indicate high biome conservatism associated with biomes situated in some of the extremes of the global climate gradient (evergreen tropical rainforest, steppe and tundra) for both bird taxa. Finally, the historical dynamics of tropical seasonal biomes, such as tropical deciduous woodlands and savannas, appear to have played a preponderant role during the diversification processes of these bird lineages.Depto. de Geodinámica, Estratigrafía y PaleontologíaFac. de Ciencias GeológicasTRUEMinisterio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICINN)Universidad Complutense de MadridColombian administrative Department for Science and InnovationDirección General de Investigaciones of Universidad Santiago de CaliTalent Attraction Program of the Madrid GovernmentUniversidad Complutense de Madridpu

Ecomorphological characterization of murines and non-arvicoline cricetids (Rodentia) from south-western Europe since the latest Middle Miocene to the Mio-Pliocene boundary (MN 7/8-MN13)

SUBVENCIÓ: Universidad Complutense de Madrid: BOUC UCM 17-5-2016 (CT27 / 16-CT28 / 16)Rodents are the most speciose group of mammals and display a great ecological diversity. Despite the greater amount of ecomorphological information compiled for extant rodent species, studies usually lack of morphological data on dentition, which has led to difficulty in directly utilizing existing ecomorphological data of extant rodents for paleoecological reconstruction because teeth are the most common or often the only micromammal fossils. Here, we infer the environmental ranges of extinct rodent genera by extracting habitat information from extant relatives and linking it to extinct taxa based on the phenogram of the cluster analysis, in which variables are derived from the principal component analysis on outline shape of the upper first molars. This phenotypic ''bracketing'' approach is particularly useful in the study of the fossil record of small mammals, which is mostly represented by isolated teeth. As a case study, we utilize extinct genera of murines and non-arvicoline cricetids, ranging from the Iberoccitanian latest middle Miocene to the Mio-Pliocene boundary, and compare our results thoroughly with previous paleoecological reconstructions inferred by diferent methods. The resultant phenogram shows a predominance of ubiquitous genera among the Miocene taxa, and the presence of a few forest specialists in the two rodent groups (Murinae and Cricetidae), along with the absence of open environment specialists in either group of rodents. This appears to be related to the absence of enduring grassland biomes in the Iberian Peninsula during the late Miocene. High consistency between our result and previous studies suggests that this phenotypic ''bracketing'' approach is a very useful tool

Paleoenvironmental characterization of the Paracuellos-3 and Paracuellos-5 sites (Middle Miocene, Madrid Basin) based on the body weight structure of mammalian faunas

El evento de enfriamiento global del Mioceno medio ha sido descrito, a escala local, en el centro de la Península Ibérica (Cuenca de Madrid). Algunos yacimientos paleontológicos como Somosaguas (14,1 Ma) y Cerro de los Batallones (9 Ma) han sido ampliamente estudiados. Además, otros yacimientos situados temporalmente entre ellos, como los yacimientos de Paracuellos del Jarama, tienen un gran potencial de estudio. En este trabajo se han caracterizado los paleoambientes de los yacimientos de Paracuellos-5 (13,7 Ma) y Paracuellos-3 (12,8 Ma), ambos pertenecientes al Mioceno medio, para dar una visión más completa de las características paleoambientales de este intervalo. Se emplearon seis modelos cuantitativos de inferencia climática basados en la estructura de pesos corporales de los mamíferos para estimar la temperatura y la precipitación en el área de estudio. Las inferencias ambientales obtenidas permiten exponer la hipótesis de que en un intervalo de tiempo menor a 1 millón de años, el ambiente existente en Paracuellos tuvo una tendencia hacia el aumento de la humedad, aún manteniéndose como un ambiente de extrema aridezThe middle Miocene global cooling event has been described at a local scale in central Spain (Madrid Basin). There are well-studied fossil sites as Somosaguas (14.1 Ma) and Cerro de los Batallones (9 Ma). In addition, other fossil sites situated temporarily between them, such as the Paracuellos del Jarama fossil sites have a great potential. In this work, the palaeoenvironments of Paracuellos-5(13.7 Ma) and Paracuellos-3 (12.8 Ma) sites, both from the middle Miocene, have been characterized to show a more complete view of the environmental characteristics prevailing during this period. Six quantitative climatic inference models based on body-size structure of mammal faunas have been used to estimate temperature and precipitation of the study area. The obtained environmental inferences allow formulating the hypothesis that, in a time interval of less than 1 million years, the environment of Paracuellos experienced a trend through slightly more humid conditions, remaining as an extremely arid environmen

Patología dual y trastornos mentales en reclusos consumidores de sustancias

The aims of this study were to determine the frequency of dual pathology and suicide risks in substance-using prisoners and to analyze the factors associated with their development. The sample consisted of 143 prisoners (95.8% male) confined in the prison of Villabona (Asturias, Spain). Descriptive and logistic regression analyses were used. Thirty-five percent of inmates were found to have a dual diagnosis and 60.6% of this subsample presented risk of suicide. We found that to have been a childhood victim of physical abuse increases the likelihood of developing substance use disorder, anxiety disorder and/or dual pathology. However, having been a victim of psychological abuse raises the risk of developing mood and psychotic disorders.Los objetivos de este estudio fueron evaluar la frecuencia de patología dual y de riesgo de suicidio en personas consumidoras de sustancias internadas en prisión e investigar los factores asociados con su desarrollo. La muestra estuvo compuesta por 143 reclusos (95,8% varones) ingresados en el centro penitenciario de Villabona (Asturias). Se realizaron análisis descriptivos y de regresión logística. Un 35% de los internos presentaron patología dual, de los cuales el 60,6% presentó también riesgo de suicidio. Se observó asimismo que la presencia de malos tratos físicos en la infancia incrementa la probabilidad de desarrollar un trastorno por consumo de sustancias, de ansiedad y/o patología dual. Por el contrario, la exposición al maltrato psicológico eleva el riesgo de desarrollo de trastornos afectivos y psicóticos.

DigApp and TaphonomApp: Two new open-access palaeontological and archaeological mobile apps

Two new paleontological and archaeological Android applications, DigApp and TaphonomApp, are presented in this manuscript. DigApp is intended to aid data collection, storage and management in archaeological and palaeontological excavations. DigApp allows easily recording of common field information such as spatial data and fossil identification data. Online and offline versions of DigApp were developed to fit all needs, and they can be modified according to the excavation particularities. TaphonomApp was created in order to assist taphonomists while carrying out detailed taphonomical evaluations both in the field and in the laboratory, making data collection quicker, homogeneous and overall, more efficient. DigApp and TaphonomApp are free, open-access and flexible software, that can be easily modified by any user (without the need of expertise in computing or coding) as explained in this paper. An in-depth guide on how to modify the apps is provided within this paper. DigApp and TaphonomApp have been used during palaeontological excavations carried out at one of the Batallones Butte vertebrate sites (Batallones-10, Middle Miocene) in the Madrid basin (Spain)

A phylogenetic study to assess the link between biome specialization and diversification in swallowtail butterflies

The resource-use hypothesis, proposed by E.S. Vrba, states that habitat fragmentation caused by climatic oscillations would affect particularly biome specialists (species inhabiting only one biome), which might show higher speciation and extinction rates than biome generalists. If true, lineages would accumulate biome-specialist species. This effect would be particularly exacerbated for biomes located at the periphery of the global climatic conditions, namely, biomes that have high/low precipitation and high/low temperature such as rainforest (warm-humid), desert (warm-dry), steppe (cold-dry) and tundra (cold-humid). Here, we test these hypotheses in swallowtail butterflies, a clade with more than 570 species, covering all the continents but Antarctica, and all climatic conditions. Swallowtail butterflies are among the most studied insects, and they are a model group for evolutionary biology and ecology studies. Continental macroecological rules are normally tested using vertebrates, this means that there are fewer examples exploring terrestrial invertebrate patterns at global scale. Here, we compiled a large Geographic Information System database on swallowtail butterflies' distribution maps and used the most complete time-calibrated phylogeny to quantify diversification rates (DRs). In this paper, we aim to answer the following questions: (1) Are there more biome-specialist swallowtail butterflies than biome generalists? (2) Is DR related to biome specialization? (3) If so, do swallowtail butterflies inhabiting extreme biomes show higher DRs? (4) What is the effect of species distribution area? Our results showed that swallowtail family presents a great number of biome specialists which showed substantially higher DRs compared to generalists. We also found that biome specialists are unevenly distributed across biomes. Overall, our results are consistent with the resource-use hypothesis, species climatic niche and biome fragmentation as key factors promoting isolation