Understanding the ways and the dynamics of collaborative innovation processes: the case of the Maritime Cluster of the Algarve region (Portugal)

The Algarve region has always showed a close relationship with the sea as a result of its excellent natural conditions, historical and cultural reasons, and notorious know-how related with traditional maritime activities, such as fisheries and fish processing, and naval industry; more recently, nautical activities, such as tourism and recreational boating, have been gaining increased importance. The region is also well infrastructured in terms of public R&D institutions which are important cornerstones of the regional and national innovation systems. Through surveys carried out over a population of firms related to fisheries, aquaculture, fish processing and trade, nautical tourism, naval construction, and repair and shipping, we intend to: (1) characterize the innovation processes adopted by the Algarve’s firms of the maritime economy and evaluate some of the main outputs generated by R&D activities promoted by the regional innovation centers; (2) analyze the potential externalities linked to the production and dissemination of information from knowledge spillovers and knowledge networks; and (3) assess the strategic interest associated with the use of knowledge-intensive service activities regarding their role as sources and/or facilitators of innovation in customer organizations, or as carriers of innovation, when they help in transferring knowledge between or within organizations

Le groupe stratégique des entreprises de terroir

International audienceA partir d'une matrice portérienne, l'auteur montre qu'il existe, sur le marché des biens alimentaires, quatre groupes stratégiques possibles pour les entreprises : production de masse standardisée basique à coûts maîtrisés (très grandes firmes multinationales, TGFM) ; hypersegmentation par production de masse flexible (TGFM) ; sous-traitance de marques de distributeurs (PME) ; produits de haute qualité spécifique (PME de terroir). Ce dernier groupe stratégique possède de bonnes perspectives de développement en terme de marché potentiel

NEMED CEC PROJECT : Nephrops norvegicus (L.): Comparative biology and fishery : MED92/008 : Directorate Generale XIV : Final Report

Coordinador del Proyecto MED92/0008 Francesc Sardà AmillsThis study has been funded by the Commission of European CommunitiesPeer Reviewe

Seascape genomics and mitogenomic phylogeography of the sailfish (Istiophorus platypterus)

Permeable phylogeographic barriers characterize the vast open ocean, boosting gene flow and counteracting population differentiation and speciation of widely distributed and migratory species. However, many widely distributed species consists of distinct populations throughout their distribution, evidencing that our understanding of how the marine environment triggers population and species divergence are insufficient. The sailfish is a circumtropical and highly migratory billfish that inhabits warm and productive areas. Despite its ecological and socioeconomic importance as a predator and fishery resource, the species is threatened by overfishing, requiring innovative approaches to improve their management and conservation status. Thus, we presented a novel high-quality reference genome for the species and applied a seascape genomics approach to understand how marine environmental features may promote local adaptation and how it affects gene flow between populations. We delimit two populations between the Atlantic and Indo-Western Pacific oceans and detect outlier loci correlated with sea surface temperature, salinity, oxygen, and chlorophyll concentrations. However, the most significant explanatory factor that explains the differences between populations was isolation by distance. Despite recent population drops, the sailfish populations are not inbred. For billfishes in general, genome-wide heterozygosity was found to be relatively low compared to other marine fishes, evidencing the need to counteract overfishing effects. In addition, in a climate change scenario, management agencies must implement state-of-the-art sequencing methods, consider our findings in their management plans, and monitor genome-wide heterozygosity over time to improve sustainable fisheries and the long-term viability of its populations

The biogeography of community assembly: latitude and predation drive variation in community trait distribution in a guild of epifaunal crustaceans

AbstractWhile considerable evidence exists of biogeographic patterns in the intensity of species interactions, the influence of these patterns on variation in community structure is less clear. Using a model selection approach on measures of trait dispersion in crustaceans associated with eelgrass (Zostera marina) spanning 30º of latitude in two oceans, we found that dispersion strongly increased with increasing predation and decreasing latitude. Ocean and epiphyte load appeared as secondary predictors; Pacific communities were more overdispersed while Atlantic communities were more clustered, and increasing epiphytes were associated with increased clustering. By examining how species interactions and environmental filters influence community structure across biogeographic regions, we demonstrate how both latitudinal variation in species interactions and historical contingency shape these responses. Community trait distributions have implications for ecosystem stability and functioning, and integrating large-scale observations of environmental filters, species interactions, and traits can help us predict how communities may respond to environmental change

Code and data used for analyses from The biogeography of community assembly: latitude and predation drive variation in community trait distribution in a guild of epifaunal crustaceans

Zip file including raw trait, environmental, and community data, code for conducting analyses, and a spreadsheet summarizing model selectio

Database: Tidal Marsh Soil Organic Carbon (MarSOC) Dataset

The repository is formatted in the following structure: - README.md: markdown file with repository description - MarSOC-Dataset.Rproj: R project file - useful when using RStudio - Maxwell_MarSOC_dataset.csv: .csv file containing the final dataset. The data structure is described in the metadata file. It contains 17,454 records distributed amongst 29 countries. - Maxwell_MarSOC_dataset_metadata.csv: .csv file containing the main data file metadata (equivalent to Table 1). - data_paper/: folder containing the list of studies included in the dataset, as well as figures for this data paper (generated from the following R script: ‘reports/04_data_process/scripts/04_data-paper_data_clean.R’). - reports/01_litsearchr/: folder containing .bib files with references from the original naive search, a .Rmd document describing the litsearchr analysis using nodes to go from the naive search to the final search string, and the .bib files from this final search, which were then imported into sysrev for abstract screening. - reports/02_sysrev/: folder with .csv files exported from sysrev after abstract screening. These files contain the included studies with their various labels. - reports/03_data_format/: folder containing all original data, associated scripts, and exported data. - reports/04_data_process/: folder containing data processing scripts to bind and clean the exported data, as well as a script testing the different models for predicting soil organic carbon from organic matter and finalising the equation using all available data. A script testing and removing outliers is also included