Search

Las Fiestas de Primavera de Sevilla (FPS) constituyen el principal evento cultural de la ciudad con importantes implicaciones sociales, turísticas y económicas. Nuestro trabajo analiza esta dimensión de la cultura de la ciudad en un doble plano. Por un lado, se lleva a cabo una caracterización de las FPS, prototipo de patrimonio cultural material e inmaterial. Por otro lado, se lleva a cabo un estudio de Impacto Económico, calculado a partir de la suma de tres efectos. En primer lugar, los efectos directos derivados del gasto necesario realizado por instituciones públicas y privadas para la celebración del evento. En segundo lugar, los efectos indirectos, producto del gasto efectuado por los participantes en los eventos. Por último, se estiman los efectos inducidos para la economía en su conjunto, mediante los multiplicadores calculados a partir de una tabla Input-Output. La principal contribución del artículo es abordar un estudio de impacto económico de un bien cultural complejo y de naturaleza compuesta, como ejemplo de valorización económica a través de la cultura. Los resultados muestran un impacto económico estimado para el año 2009 de 915,8 millones de euros, que representan un 4,66% del PIB de la ciudad de Sevilla.

SummaryThe Egyptian VultureNeophron percnopteruswas once an abundant species in the Cabo Verde Islands. Since the 1960s though, and especially during the 1980–1990s, it consistently declined to near extinction. Evidence collected indicates a remnant population of about a dozen pairs or less, scattered through the desert rangelands of only three islands. Extensive enquiry work revealed that this likely resulted from the concomitant effects of the rise in unnatural mortality due to the formerly widespread and long-lasting use of dangerous pesticides and the (still on-going) poisoning of stray dogs and other nuisance animals, and a decrease in food resources associated with factors linked with development, such as urbanisation, rural abandonment and better sanitation. Avoiding imminent extinction calls for emergency action against current threats to the remaining vultures, such as poisoning and electrocution, but also potential causes of impaired fecundity such as hazardous pesticides and shortage of food resources.

Population range expansions and contractions as a response to climate and habitat change throughout the Quaternary are known to have contributed to complex phylogenetic and population genetic events. Speciation patterns and processes in Palearctic buzzards (genus Buteo) are a long-standing example of morphological and genetic data incongruence, attributed to panmixia, habitat range shifts, contact zones, and climate change. Here we assess the systematics, phylogeography and population genetic structure of three nominal species of Palearctic buzzards, Buteo buteo (including B. b. vulpinus), B. rufinus (including B. r. cirtensis) and B. hemilasius. Phylogenetic analyses inferred from mitochondrial data recover B. hemilasius as sister to the sister clades B. r. rufinus and B. buteo complex (B. b. buteo, B. b. vulpinus, but also including B. r. cirtensis). In contrast, we find an unresolved genetic delimitation inferred from four nuclear loci, suggesting an ancestral genetic pool for all species. Time-trees suggest population contractions and expansions throughout the Pleistocene, which likely reflect habitat change and contrasting ecological niche requirements between species. Microsatellite-based extended Bayesian skyline plots reveal relatively constant population sizes for B. hemilasius, B. r. rufinus, and B. b. vulpinus, in contrast to a dramatic population expansion in B. r. cirtensis within the last 3 kya. Overall, our study illustrates how complex population processes over the Late Pleistocene have shaped the patterns of genetic divergence in Palearctic buzzards, due to the joint effects of shared ancestral polymorphisms, population expansions and contractions, with hybridization at contact zones leading to admixture and introgression.

Guinea-Bissau is a small country in West Africa, which in spite of its rich biodiversity and the high proportion of protected areas remains under-surveyed in relation to most animal groups, including raptors. The first scientific articles about raptors were only very recently issued. Here, we report raptor occurrence data from eastern Guinea-Bissau. Raptors were surveyed in the dry season along transects walked around 21 villages in a rural woodland-farmland mosaic landscape. The raptor assemblage is composed of 25 species of which the hooded vulture, the lizard buzzard and the African harrier-hawk were the species more often encountered, followed by the African white-backed vulture. The palm-nut vulture, black kite, brown snake-eagle, grasshopper buzzard, African hawk-eagle, grey kestrel and lanner falcon were secondary, although not uncommon species. The remaining species were seldom recorded. The study complements previous knowledge on this bird group, specifically in the central-eastern part of the country, and reaffirms the international relevance of Guinea-Bissau for the conservation of the hooded and African white-backed vultures.

The cultivation of perennial cash crops is fast expanding in the tropics, but for most crops and regions there is very limited understanding about their biodiversity impacts. This is the case of cashew nut cultivation, which is occupying ever larger areas, particularly in West Africa. Here we investigated the impacts of cashew cultivation on biodiversity using butterfly assemblages sampled across a gradient of cashew expansion in Guinea-Bissau (West Africa). The overall species richness and abundance of butterflies were only slightly lower in cashew orchards than in native woodland habitats, but whereas the former were dominated by generalist species, the latter showed a much higher richness and abundance of trophic and habitat specialists. The landscape context significantly affected butterfly assemblages, with reduced richness and abundance of generalist species recorded within woodland habitats in heterogeneous landscapes with low woodland cover. Increases in land cover by cashew cultivation were associated with reduced abundance of specialist species within woodland habitats, and reduced abundance of generalist species within cashew orchards. Overall, our study provides the first evidence that cashew expansion may have serious negative consequences for biodiversity in West Africa, suggesting that this is an unfolding conservation problem that needs to be fully evaluated. Retaining woodland patches within production landscapes might help reducing the negative impacts of cashew expansion on biodiversity.

Understanding the mechanisms that shape animal population dynamics is of fundamental interest in ecology, evolution and conservation biology. Food supply is an important limiting factor in most animal populations and may have demographic consequences. Optimal foraging theory predicts greater consumption of preferred prey and less diet diversity when food is abundant, which may benefit key fitness parameters such as productivity and survival. Nevertheless, the correspondence between individual resource use and demographic processes in populations of avian predators inhabiting large geographic areas remains largely unexplored, particularly in complex ecosystems such as those of the Mediterranean basin. Based on a long-term monitoring program of the diet and demography of Bonelli’s eagle Aquila fasciata in western Europe, here we test the hypothesis that a predator’s diet is correlated to its breeding productivity and survival at both the territorial and population levels, and ultimately to its population growth rate. At the territorial level, we found that productivity increased with greater consumption of European rabbits Oryctolagus cuniculus, the Bonelli’s eagle’s preferred prey, and pigeons, an important alternative prey for this predator. The survival of territorial pairs was negatively affected by higher diet diversity, which probably reflected the inability to find sufficient high quality prey. Diet effects at the population level were similar but more noticeable than at the territorial level, i.e. a greater consumption of rabbits, together with lesser consumption of small-to-medium avian species (‘other birds’; non-preferred prey), increased productivity, while greater diet diversity and lower consumption of rabbits was associated with reduced survival and population growth rate. Overall, our study illustrates how the diet of a predator species can be closely related to key individual vital rates, which, in turn, leave a measurable fingerprint on population dynamics within and among populations across large spatial scales.

Species ranges often change in relation to multiple environmental and demographic factors. Innovative behaviors may affect these changes by facilitating the use of novel habitats, although this idea has been little explored. Here, we investigate the importance of behavior during range change, using a 25-year population expansion of Bonelli’s eagle in southern Portugal. This unique population is almost exclusively tree nesting, while all other populations in western Europe are predominantly cliff nesting. During 1991–2014, we surveyed nest sites and estimated the year when each breeding territory was established. We approximated the boundaries of 84 territories using Dirichlet tessellation and mapped topography, land cover, and the density of human infrastructures in buffers (250, 500, and 1,000 m) around nest and random sites. We then compared environmental conditions at matching nest and random sites within territories using conditional logistic regression, and used quantile regression to estimate trends in nesting habitats in relation to the year of territory establishment. Most nests (>85%, n = 197) were in eucalypts, maritime pines, and cork oaks. Nest sites were farther from the nests of neighboring territories than random points, and they were in areas with higher terrain roughness, lower cover by agricultural and built-up areas, and lower road and powerline densities. Nesting habitat selection varied little with year of territory establishment, although nesting in eucalypts increased, while cliff nesting and cork oak nesting, and terrain roughness declined. Our results suggest that the observed expansion of Bonelli’s eagles was facilitated by the tree nesting behavior, which allowed the colonization of areas without cliffs. However, all but a very few breeding pairs settled in habitats comparable to those of the initial population nucleus, suggesting that after an initial trigger possibly facilitated by tree nesting, the habitat selection remained largely conservative. Overall, our study supports recent calls to incorporate information on behavior for understanding and predicting species range shifts info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Summary 1. A long-standing question in ecology is how natural populations respond to a changing environment. Emergent optimal foraging theory-based models for individual variation go beyond the population level and predict how its individuals would respond to disturbances that produce changes in resource availability. 2. Evaluating variations in resource use patterns at the intrapopulation level in wild populations under changing environmental conditions would allow to further advance in the research on foraging ecology and evolution by gaining a better idea of the underlying mechanisms explaining trophic diversity. 3. In this study, we use a large spatio-temporal scale data set (western continental Europe, 1968–2006) on the diet of Bonelli’s Eagle Aquila fasciata breeding pairs to analyse the predator trophic responses at the intrapopulation level to a prey population crash. In particular, we borrow metrics from studies on network structure and intrapopulation variation to understand how an emerging infectious disease [the rabbit haemorrhagic disease (RHD)] that caused the density of the eagle’s primary prey (rabbit Oryctolagus cuniculus) to dramatically drop across Europe impacted on resource use patterns of this endangered raptor. 4. Following the major RHD outbreak, substantial changes in Bonelli’s Eagle’s diet diversity and organisation patterns at the intrapopulation level took place. Dietary variation among breeding pairs was larger after than before the outbreak. Before RHD, there were no clusters of pairs with similar diets, but significant clustering emerged after RHD. Moreover, diets at the pair level presented a nested pattern before RHD, but not after. 5. Here, we reveal how intrapopulation patterns of resource use can quantitatively and qualitatively vary, given drastic changes in resource availability. 6. For the first time, we show that a pathogen of a prey species can indirectly impact the intrapopulation patterns of resource use of an endangered predator.

We studied the diet of breeding Ospreys (Pandion haliaetus) in the Cape Verde archipelago during 2006, using prey remains recovered at 21 nests and perches on the islands of Sao Vicente, Santiago, Santa Luzia, Boavista, Branco, and Raso. We identified a total of 1264 individual fish prey items of 35 species. Diet was dominated (>80%) by only six fish species, including Trachinotus ovatus, Exocoetus volitans, Aulostomus strigosus, Sparisoma cretense, Sardinella maderensis, and Tylosurus acus. Dominant prey species varied among islands, but diet similarity was greater between nearby islands. Pelagic species were consumed most frequently (>60%) in Boavista and Santa Luzia, whereas demersal reef fish dominated (>50%) in the other islands. The fish consumed were generally large, though there was wide variation in estimated length (20.7–62.2 cm) and weight (49–1117 g). A comparison of Osprey diet with Cape Verde fisheries suggested that the potential for conflict is low, due to minimal overlap in the p...

Aim To explore the influence of an emerging infectious disease (EID) affecting a prey species on the spatial patterns and temporal shifts in the diet of a predator over a large geographical scale. We reviewed studies on the diet of Bonelli’s eagles (Hieraaetus fasciatus) in order to determine the repercussions of the reduction in the density of its main prey, the rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus), caused by outbreaks of rabbit haemorrhagic disease (RHD) since 1988. Location Western continental Europe. Methods We compiled published and unpublished information on the diet of breeding Bonelli’s eagles from Portugal, Spain and France for a 39-year study period (1968–2006). Nonparametric tests were used in order to analyse temporal shifts in diet composition and trophic diversity (H′) between the periods of ‘high’ (before outbreak of RHD) and ‘low’ rabbit density (after outbreak of RHD). A combination of hierarchical agglomerative clustering and non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) analyses were used to test for the existence of geographical patterns in the diet of Bonelli’s eagles in each period. Results The diet of the Bonelli’s eagle consisted of rabbit (28.5%), pigeons (24.0%), partridges (15.3%), ‘other birds’ (11.6%), ‘other mammals’ (7.1%), corvids (7.0%), and herptiles (6.4%). However, RHD had large consequences for its feeding ecology: the consumption of rabbits decreased by one-third after the outbreak of RHD. Conversely, trophic diversity (H′) increased after outbreak of RHD. At the same time, the analyses showed clear geographical patterns in the diet of the Bonelli’s eagle before, but not after, RHD outbreak. Main conclusions Geographical patterns in the diet of the Bonelli’s eagle in western Europe seem to be driven mainly by spatio-temporal variation in the abundance of rabbits and, to a lesser extent, by the local (territorial) environmental features conditioning the presence and density of alternative prey species. We show that an EID can disrupt predator–prey relationships at large spatial and temporal scales through a severe decline in the population of the main prey species. Hence we argue that strict guidelines should be drawn up to prevent human-aided dissemination of ‘pathogen pollution’, which can threaten wildlife not only at the population and species level but also at the community and ecosystem scale.

Although scrub cover is generally regarded as an important habitat component of the European wild rabbit Oryctolagus cuniculus, little is known about the species' responses to variation in scrub structure and composition. Such information is required for conservation management of rabbits in Mediterranean scrublands of the Iberian Peninsula (southwestern Europe), where the species is both a key resource for a range of endangered predators and a popular game species. To address this issue, we estimated the effects of variables characterising scrub vegetation on the occurrence and number of rabbit latrines in 60 250-m transects distributed in a 5,000-ha scrubland-dominated landscape in southwestern Portugal. The strongest effect was that of cover by the shrub Cistus ladanifer, which was positively related to both the occurrence and relative abundance of rabbits. Conversely, rabbits showed negative responses to cover by Chamaespartium tridentatum, ericoid and other broad-leaved shrubs. Rabbits favou...

Mercury (Hg) was determined in adult Bonelli's eagles (Hieraaetus fasciatus) and their avian prey, from samples of feathers collected between 1992 and 2001 at the nesting sites of 21 pairs in Southwest Portugal. Eagle Hg levels showed great variation, reflecting primarily differences in diet composition and food chain biomagnification. Concentrations were positively correlated with the dietary proportion of insectivorous and omnivorous birds (e.g. egrets, corvids and thrushes), with very low levels for pairs feeding mainly on herbivores (e.g. rabbits, pigeons and partridges). Differences in prey contamination among breeding territories added to dietary effects in determining variation of Hg levels in eagles, shaping a spatial pattern that was largely consistent with a source of contamination in a coal-burning power-plant lying upwind of the study area. Despite this presumed contamination, Hg levels seemed to be of little concern to this eagle population, though there might be subtle deleterious effects on the reproductive output of a few pairs. This study emphasizes the need to account for dietary effects when biomonitoring Hg contamination using birds of prey.

Background In our hospital we performed a prospective, randomized, double-blind, and controlled study on the efficacy of oral atenolol in patients with neurocardiogenic syncope. Fifty patients with clinically diagnosed vasovagal syncope were included.A complete study to discard other possible causes of syncope was performed in all patients. In the first part of this study, before the patients were randomized in two groups to receive either atenolol or placebo, a baseline tilt test with a protocol of 80° during 45 minutes was performed. Methods All patients with a positive response (18) underwent an infusion of intravenous atenolol and the test was repeated. Four patients with a positive baseline test did not accept the infusion of that drug and, therefore, were not included in this protocol. Atenolol prevented a second positive tilt in 5 of 18 patients (27.8%). Results There were no significant differences between both groups with respect to age, gender, blood pressure, heart rate, and number of episodes of syncope. Thirteen patients had a recurrent positive response in spite of atenolol. Eleven of these subjects had a syncope during the first tilt test. In seven of these patients (63.6%) atenolol prevented severe symptoms 'syncope) in the second test. In patients with a significant cardioinhibitory response in the first test, atenolol did not prevent a second positive response in any of the patients. Conclusions In our study, intravenous atenolol was not an efficient drug to prevent a second positive tilt test in patients with clinically diagnosed vasovagal syncope and a first positive tilt-table test. Only 5 of 18 patients (27.8%) had a negative response in the second test after the infusion of that drug. This drug was more effective in patients with a vasodepressor or mixed response in the first tilt test. A.N.E. 1999; 4(2):130–136

In bird species that have a high movement capacity, dispersal may connect subpopulations over vast geographical regions, with important consequences for the design of conservation management strategies. Here we used a molecular approach to infer the patterns and rates of dispersal among eight Mediterranean subpopulations of the endangered Bonelli's Eagle, based on 245 individuals screened at 17 microsatellite loci. There was moderate genetic differentiation between subpopulations sampled in the western (Iberia and Morocco) and eastern (Cyprus) Mediterranean, whereas differentiation among subpopulations in the former region was weak to moderate and followed a pattern of isolation by distance. Within the western Mediterranean, the small, peripheral and ecologically unique population of southwest Portugal had the lowest genetic diversity and the highest differentiation. The remaining subpopulations formed two loose clusters, one including Morocco and southwest and eastern Spain, and the other northeast Portugal and western and central Spain. Few recent migrants were detected, and they originated primarily from adjacent subpopulations. Our findings suggest that western Mediterranean Bonelli's Eagles may have a large-scale metapopulation structure, with subpopulations connected to some extent by distance-dependent dispersal, probably influenced by natal philopatry and the geographical configuration of subpopulations. The combination of marked ecological and genetic divergence suggests that the peripheral subpopulation of southwest Portugal may be regarded as a distinct management unit.

Population viability analysis (PVA) has become a basic tool of current conservation practice. However, if not accounted for properly, the uncertainties inherent to PVA predictions can decrease the reliability of this type of analysis. In the present study, we performed a PVA of the whole western European population (France, Portugal, and Spain) of the endangered Bonelli's Eagle (Aquila fasciata), in which we thoroughly explored the consequences of uncertainty in population processes and parameters on PVA predictions. First, we estimated key vital rates (survival, fertility, recruitment, and dispersal rates) using monitoring, ringing, and bibliographic data from the period 1990-2009 from 12 populations found throughout the studied geographic range. Second, we evaluated the uncertainty about model structure (i.e., the assumed processes that govern individual fates and population dynamics) by comparing the observed growth rates of the studied populations with model predictions for the same period. Third, using the model structures suggested in the previous step, we assessed the viability of both the local populations and the overall population. Finally, we analyzed the effects of model and parameter uncertainty on PVA predictions. Our results strongly support the idea that all local populations in western Europe belong to a single, spatially structured population operating as a source-sink system, whereby the populations in the south of the Iberian Peninsula act as sources and, thanks to dispersal, sustain all other local populations, which would otherwise decline. Predictions regarding population dynamics varied considerably, and models assuming more constrained dispersal predicted more pessimistic population trends than models assuming greater dispersal. Model predictions accounting for parameter uncertainty revealed a marked increase in the risk of population declines over the next 50 years. Sensitivity analyses indicated that adult and pre-adult survival are the chief vital rates regulating these populations, and thus, the conservation efforts aimed at improving these survival rates should be strengthened in order to guarantee the long-term viability of the European populations of this endangered species. Overall, the study provides a framework for the implementation of multi-site PVAs and highlights the importance of dispersal processes in shaping the population dynamics of long-lived birds distributed across heterogeneous landscapes. Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia CGL200-64805/BOS CGL2010-17056 SAB-2006-0014/Roger

1. Two main hypotheses are usually invoked to explain density dependence in fecundity: the habitat heterogeneity hypothesis (HHH) and the individual adjustment hypothesis (IAH). Although simple methods have been proposed to discriminate between the two hypotheses, their adequacy was tested for only a limited set of real and model populations. 2. In a computer simulation study based on a stochastic territory-based approach, Ferrer, Newton & Casado (2006, Journal of Animal Ecology, 75, 111-117) argued that a strong negative relationship between mean fecundity and its skewness in stable or increasing populations provides critical support for HHH, as this relationship should be lacking under IAH. A negative relationship between mean fecundity and its coefficient of variation (CV) was predicted under both hypotheses, although with a lower slope under IAH. 3. We used a comparable simulation approach, with model populations parameterized from an increasing Bonelli's eagle Hieraaetus fasciatus population (1992-2006), to show that both HHH and IAH can produce indistinguishable relationships between mean fecundity and both its CV and its skewness. 4. Strong negative correlations between the mean and both its CV and its skewness can emerge as statistical artifacts under biologically plausible assumptions, and so they may be largely inadequate to infer mechanisms underlying density dependence in demographic parameters.

International audience; To obtain polymorphic molecular markers for population genetic and conservation studies in the Eurasian vulture Gyps fulvus populations, we screened a size-selected partial genomic library enriched for microsatellites with dinucleotide motifs. A total of five polymorphic markers were obtained. The number of alleles ranged from two to nine and the observed and expected heterozygosity were very similar. These markers will be very useful for studying population structure and to evaluate conservation programmes.