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In the last two decades, Spain's Canary Islands have received thousands of undocumented migrants arriving by boat from the coasts of North and West Africa. The sharp increase of unaccompanied minors has presented a particular challenge, as these minors fall under the State's protection system and are entitled to an education and other rights, once in Spain. What economic and socio-cultural factors push these youth to seek a better life whilst endangering their own? What educational opportunities are available to them in Spain and how can these propel them into secure living situations? What can be said about their integration prospects? This ethnographic study, based on field research carried out in a reception centre for unaccompanied minors in Tenerife, focuses on the youth's migration trajectories, and on the extent to which the education and support they receive in Spain relates to their socio-economic integration into European society and beyond. The findings reveal that although the centre provides the youth with a window of opportunity to be in Spain and gain an education, the ambiguousness of their legal situation brought about by immigration policies once they have left the centre, is not conducive to their leading a stable and productive life in the current context.

Sexual selection has been suggested to be an important driver of speciation in cichlid fishes of the Great Lakes of Africa, and the presence of male egg dummies is proposed to have played a key role. Here, we investigate how mouthbrooding and egg dummies have evolved in Tanganyikan cichlids, the lineage which seeded the other African radiations, with a special emphasis on the egg dummies. Using modern phylogenetic comparative analyses and a phylogeny including 86% of the 200 described species, we provide formal evidence demonstrating correlated evolution between mouthbrooding and egg dummies in Tanganyikan cichlids. These results concur with existing evidence, suggesting that egg dummies have evolved through sensory exploitation. We also demonstrate that there is a strong evolutionary correlation between the presence of egg dummies and both pre- and post-copulatory sexual selection. Moreover, egg dummy evolution was contingent on the intensity of pre- and post-copulatory sexual selection in Tanganyikan cichlids. In sum, our results provide evidence supporting the hypothesis of egg dummies evolving through sensory exploitation and highlight the role of sexual selection in favouring the evolution and maintenance of this trait. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As with any organ, differences in brain size--after adequate control of allometry--are assumed to be a response to selection. With over 200 species and an astonishing diversity in niche preferences and social organization, Tanganyikan cichlids present an excellent opportunity to study brain evolution. We used phylogenetic comparative analyses of sexed adults from 39 Tanganyikan cichlid species in a multiple regression framework to investigate the influence of ecology, sexual selection and parental care patterns on whole brain size, as well as to analyse sex-specific effects. First, using species-specific measures, we analysed the influence of diet, habitat, form of care (mouthbrooding or substrate guarding), care type (biparental or female only) and intensity of sexual selection on brain size, while controlling for body size. Then, we repeated the analyses for male and female brain size separately. Type of diet and care type were significantly correlated with whole brain size. Sex-specific analyses showed that female brain size correlated significantly with care type while male brain size was uncorrelated with care type. Our results suggest that more complex social interactions associated with diet select for larger brains and further that the burden of uniparental care exerts high cognitive demands on females.