Estudio espeleológico del sector oeste de la Reserva Natural El Mulo, Sierra del Rosario, provincia Artemisa, Cuba

La Reserva Natural El Mulo constituye una de las zonas de conservación del Área Protegida de Recursos Manejados Sierra del Rosario (Reserva de la Biosfera). Se ubica en la provincia Artemisa, ocupando territorios de los municipios Candelaria y Bahía Honda, en la parte centro-noreste de la mencionada área protegida, con una superficie de 280.53 ha. La zona central de la Reserva Natural está constituida por una meseta ondulada sobre brechas de la formación Cacarajícara. Las depresiones que conforman el fondo de las ondulaciones son, en su mayoría, hoyos o simas en forma de embudos que permiten evacuar el drenaje superficial de este sector, constituyendo en su conjunto una microcuenca endorreica cuyas aguas tributan al río San Claudio. Se realizaron dos expediciones lográndose identificar 23 hoyos con profundidades que no sobrepasan los once metros, a partir de los cuales se hace imposible continuar por oclusión de las cavidades por sedimentos o por la génesis de la propia cavidad. La progresión interna del conjunto de simas indica un desarrollo interno del flujo de drenaje este-oeste, cuestión que evidencia el aporte subterráneo al río San Claudio. Estos hoyos constituyen un importante escenario de diversidad biológica, sobre todo en los grupos de reptiles, anfibios e insectos. Los resultados que se han estado observando refuerza la necesidad de redoblar la protección y los procesos de investigación en esta área

Does phylogeographic structure relate to climatic niche divergence? A test using maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Ait.)

Aim To disentangle the effects of environmental and geographical processes driving phylogenetic distances among clades of maritime pine (Pinus pinaster). To assess the implications for conservation management of combining molecular information with species distribution models (SDMs; which predict species distribution based on known occurrence records and on environmental variables). Location Western Mediterranean Basin and European Atlantic coast. Methods We undertook two cluster analyses for eight genetically defined pine clades based on climatic niche and genetic similarities. We assessed niche similarity by means of a principal component analysis and Schoener's D metric. To calculate genetic similarity, we used the unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean based on Nei's distance using 266 single nucleotide polymorphisms. We then assessed the contribution of environmental and geographical distances to phylogenetic distance by means of Mantel regression with variance partitioning. Finally, we compared the projection obtained from SDMs fitted from the species level (SDMsp) and composed from the eight clade-level models (SDMcm). Results Genetically and environmentally defined clusters were identical. Environmental and geographical distances explained 12.6% of the phylogenetic distance variation and, overall, geographical and environmental overlap among clades was low. Large differences were detected between SDMsp and SDMcm (57.75% of disagreement in the areas predicted as suitable). Main conclusions The genetic structure within the maritime pine subspecies complex is primarily a consequence of its demographic history, as seen by the high proportion of unexplained variation in phylogenetic distances. Nevertheless, our results highlight the contribution of local environmental adaptation in shaping the lower-order, phylogeographical distribution patterns and spatial genetic structure of maritime pine: (1) genetically and environmentally defined clusters are consistent, and (2) environment, rather than geography, explained a higher proportion of variation in phylogenetic distance. SDMs, key tools in conservation management, better characterize the fundamental niche of the species when they include molecular information