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Understanding natural populations trends has emerged as a key objective to bend the curve of biodiversity loss. Of particular concern are the impacts of stressors at the local scale, which are not necessarily reflected in the current global conservation assessments. As a hotspot of biodiversity, the Iberian Peninsula is an area of special interest for conservation. Here, we aim to synthesise the current knowledge about the population trends of marine, terrestrial and freshwater Iberian vertebrates. To that aim, we performed an extensive review, with more than 5000 scientific manuscripts screened and grey literature. From this initial review, and after applying data quality checks, we obtained 1500 population time series of Iberian vertebrates. Once we obtained this global database, we analysed their population trends using two-step modelling process: (i) first we applied state-space models to derive the population trend of each population time series; (ii) we then used multilevel Bayesian models to determine the factors influencing the population trends. Overall, we found that Iberian vertebrate populations display a disparity of trends, with both declines and increases, with fishes being the only taxa showing clear signs of declines. We identified major gaps in the monitoring data across the Iberian peninsula, with amphibians and reptiles being highly underrepresented in our dataset, despite being among the most threatened taxonomic groups. Overall, our approach will help to bridge the gap in our knowledge between the global and local scale conservation status of wild Iberian populations and help to focus the attention of future conservation policies.

Stage-based demographic methods, such as matrix population models (MPMs), are powerful tools used to address a broad range of fundamental questions in ecology, evolutionary biology and conservation science. Accordingly, MPMs now exist for over 3000 species worldwide. These data are being digitised as an ongoing process and periodically released into two large open-access online repositories: the COMPADRE Plant Matrix Database and the COMADRE Animal Matrix Database. During the last decade, data archiving and curation of COMPADRE and COMADRE, and subsequent comparative research, have revealed pronounced variation in how MPMs are parameterized and reported. Here, we summarise current issues related to the parameterisation and reporting of MPMs that arise most frequently and outline how they affect MPM construction, analysis, and interpretation. To quantify variation in how MPMs are reported, we present results from a survey identifying key aspects of MPMs that are frequently unreported in manuscripts. We then screen COMPADRE and COMADRE to quantify how often key pieces of information are omitted from manuscripts using MPMs. Over 80% of surveyed researchers (n = 60) state a clear benefit to adopting more standardised methodologies for reporting MPMs. Furthermore, over 85% of the 300 MPMs assessed from COMPADRE and COMADRE omitted one or more elements that are key to their accurate interpretation. Based on these insights, we identify fundamental issues that can arise from MPM construction and communication and provide suggestions to improve clarity, reproducibility and future research utilising MPMs and their required metadata. To fortify reproducibility and empower researchers to take full advantage of their demographic data, we introduce a standardised protocol to present MPMs in publications. This standard is linked to www.compadre-db.org, so that authors wishing to archive their MPMs can do so prior to submission of publications, following examples from other open

During the last two decades, several Marine Heatwaves (MHWs) have affected coralligenous assemblages in the Mediterranean Sea, causing catastrophic mass mortalities of several habitat-forming species such as gorgonians, corals, and sponges. Even though Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are contributing to effectively protect marine ecosystems, the impacts associated to extreme climatic events within MPAs are jeopardizing their protective role. Therefore, minimizing local stressors within MPAs is crucial to minimize interactive effects with global, more difficult to manage, stressors. To address this, we assessed to what extent the regulation of diving frequentation can support more effective protection to climate change, focusing on the case study of the Medes Islands, which has recently suffered the impacts of different global stressors and is one of the most visited MPAs in the Mediterranean Sea. We combined 6 years of demographic data of the red gorgonian Paramuricea clavata with population modelling tools, to explore the long-term viability of this species to different managing schemes and mass mortality events scenarios. Overall, our results show that climate-adaptive management of the recreational diving activity under climate change can enhance the long-term viability of this key Mediterranean habitat-forming octocoral, which is otherwise predicted to go locally extinct at shallow depths (<25 m) within the next 20 years. This study provides one of the few attempts to quantify to what extent an adaptive management scheme may help delay climate change impacts in a Marine Protected Area

Ocean warming and acidification may compromise calcifying species. However, their combined and long-term effects in bryozoans remain poorly understood although many species provide ecosystem services and goods. Here we examine the long-term effects of increased ocean warming and its interaction with acidification on populations of an encrusting and erect bryozoan species and their associated microbiome that naturally occur in CO2 vents in the Mediterranean Sea. Both species showed an increase of carbonate skeleton thickness, likely due to the energy reallocation to calcification under low pH conditions. However, the proportion of cover of the encrusting species decreased from 2016 to 2020 at a CO2 vent and non-acidified sites and this trend was even more negative at the acidified site. Our findings suggest the increasing seawater temperature in the last decade combined with acidified conditions have accelerated the mortality rates in the incrusting species, also shifting its microbiome towards the dominance of anaerobic microbial taxa. Microbial genera known to have essential functions to the host such as biosynthesis of defense compounds or thermal protection were also depleted in both bryozoan species under such conditions, which may have reduced their resilience to acidification. Both species may thus be particularly at risk to synergistic impacts of both warming and acidification regardless of their higher investment in calcification. Our results highlight the need to consider microbe-host interactions to better predict bryozoan responses to a changing environment

The metabolome is the biochemical basis of plant form and function, but we know little about its macroecological variation across the plant kingdom. Here, we used the plant functional trait concept to interpret leaf metabolome variation among 457 tropical and 339 temperate plant species. Distilling metabolite chemistry into five metabolic functional traits reveals that plants vary on two major axes of leaf metabolic specialization—a leaf chemical defense spectrum and an expression of leaf longevity. Axes are similar for tropical and temperate species, with many trait combinations being viable. However, metabolic traits vary orthogonally to life-history strategies described by widely used functional traits. The metabolome thus expands the functional trait concept by providing additional axes of metabolic specialization for examining plant form and function.

Climate change is causing an increase in the frequency and intensity of marine heatwaves (MHWs) and mass mortality events (MMEs) of marine organisms are one of their main ecological impacts. Here, we show that during the 2015–2019 period, the Mediterranean Sea has experienced exceptional thermal conditions resulting in the onset of five consecutive years of widespread MMEs across the basin. These MMEs affected thousands of kilometers of coastline from the surface to 45 m, across a range of marine habitats and taxa (50 taxa across 8 phyla). Significant relationships were found between the incidence of MMEs and the heat exposure associated with MHWs observed both at the surface and across depths. Our findings reveal that the Mediterranean Sea is experiencing an acceleration of the ecological impacts of MHWs which poses an unprecedented threat to its ecosystems' health and functioning. Overall, we show that increasing the resolution of empirical observation is critical to enhancing our ability to more effectively understand and manage the consequences of climate change.

Climate change is causing an increase in the frequency and intensity of marine heatwaves (MHWs) and mass mortality events (MMEs) of marine organisms are one of their main ecological impacts. Here, we show that during the 2015–2019 period, the Mediterranean Sea has experienced exceptional thermal conditions resulting in the onset of five consecutive years of widespread MMEs across the basin. These MMEs affected thousands of kilometers of coastline from the surface to 45 m, across a range of marine habitats and taxa (50 taxa across 8 phyla). Significant relationships were found between the incidence of MMEs and the heat exposure associated with MHWs observed both at the surface and across depths. Our findings reveal that the Mediterranean Sea is experiencing an acceleration of the ecological impacts of MHWs which poses an unprecedented threat to its ecosystems' health and functioning. Overall, we show that increasing the resolution of empirical observation is critical to enhancing our ability to more effectively understand and manage the consequences of climate change.

The current biodiversity crisis underscores the need to understand the capacity of natural systems to withstand the ongoing global change. As such, resilience - the ability of a system to persist after, and recover from, a disturbance - has become a crucial concept in ecology and conservation. We know that ecosystems have the ability to avoid collapse by being resilient, but this capacity has a limit, a tipping point that when surpassed the ecosystem might collapse irreversibly. Quantifying the resilience of natural systems is therefore crucial to developing effective management plans. For instance, several international conservation targets have been set to maintain the resilience of natural systems to the ongoing global change. However, ecological research has been hampered by a lack of coherent ways to define and quantify resilience comparatively. Therefore, resilience has often been conceived as a theoretical concept, with no clear means to be used by empiricists and managers. If ecology is to support and inform robust and successful policy, we must rectify this. To address this knowledge gap in this talk we will provide an overview of how ecologists define, quantify, and compare resilience across different study systems. We will also show examples from our own research at the level of populations and communities, and how these have helped us to better understand the resilience of natural systems. Finally, we will provide general guidelines to harmonise resilience research

Ocean warming and acidification may compromise calcifying species. However, their combined and long-term effects in bryozoans remain poorly understood. Here we compare the proportion of cover, skeletal structure and the microbiome composition of Pentapora ottomuelleriana population from a volcanic CO2 vent and a population living at ambient pH with lack of venting activity. The proportion of cover decreased from 2016 to 2020 at both sites but the trend was more negative at the CO2 vent site. The increasing seawater temperature in the last decade combined with acidified conditions have accelerated mortality rates at the CO2 vent site compared to those at ambient pH site, also shifting the microbiome towards the dominance of anaerobic microbial taxa. We also observed an increase of carbonate skeleton thickness and a decrease of zooid length in colonies from the CO2 vent site. Although these changes in the calcification of bryozoan individuals could be explained by the energy reallocation to calcification in periods of stress, they are not sufficient to overcome the synergistic impacts of both warming and acidification

Understanding and identifying the impacts of multiple stressors on natural populations has become a key objective for post-2020 biodiversity conservation. Of particular concern are the impacts of stressors at the local scale, which are not necessarily reflected in current global conservation assessments. As a hotspot of biodiversity, the Iberian Peninsula is an area of special interest for conservation, but it is currently facing myriad environmental problems. Yet, a synthesis of the impacts of multiple stressors on the Iberian faunal populations is glaringly missing. To contribute to this challenge, we join our efforts in an Early Career Researchers project funded by SIBECOL, which aims to synthesise current knowledge on population trends of Iberian marine, terrestrial and freshwater vertebrates, and, eventually, to identify the most common stressors for Iberian fauna populations, and their differences between major taxonomic groups and ecosystems. Here, we will present the results of the first phase of this project, whose objective was to describe the trends of Iberian vertebrate populations and identify knowledge gaps related to taxonomic groups and ecosystems. To that aim, we conducted an extensive literature review, with more than 5,000 scientific manuscripts and grey literature screened. From this initial review, and after applying data quality controls, we obtained > 1,000 population time series of Iberian vertebrates across marine, terrestrial, and freshwater ecosystems. Once we compiled this database, we analysed the population trends using a two-step modelling process: (i) first, we applied state-space models to derive the population trend of each population time series; and (ii) second, we used multilevel Bayesian models to determine the factors influencing these population trends. Overall, we found that Iberian vertebrate populations display a disparity in trends, with both declines and increases, with fishes (both marine and freshwater) being the taxa s

Climate change is causing an increase in the frequency and intensity of marine heatwaves (MHWs) and mass mortality events (MMEs) of marine organisms are one of their main ecological impacts. Here, we show that during the 2015–2019 period, the Mediterranean Sea has experienced exceptional thermal conditions resulting in the onset of five consecutive years of widespread MMEs across the basin. These MMEs affected thousands of kilometers of coastline from the surface to 45 m, across a range of marine habitats and taxa (50 taxa across 8 phyla). Significant relationships were found between the incidence of MMEs and the heat exposure associated with MHWs observed both at the surface and across depths. Our findings reveal that the Mediterranean Sea is experiencing an acceleration of the ecological impacts of MHWs which poses an unprecedented threat to its ecosystems' health and functioning. Overall, we show that increasing the resolution of empirical observation is critical to enhancing our ability to more effectively understand and manage the consequences of climate change.

Cystoseira sensu lato (s.l.) – encompassing the genera Cystoseira sensu stricto (s.s.), Ericaria and Gongolaria – is a diverse group of forest-forming brown macroalgae endemic to the warm-temperate North-east Atlantic. These algae have immense biogeographic and ecological significance and have been experiencing recent regional declines. Most Cystoseira s.l. display important morphological plasticity and can be confused with similar species. Therefore, species boundaries, geographic ranges and phylogenetic affinities remain imprecise for most. In the face of persistent taxonomic difficulties, several authors underlined the necessity for new molecular-based approaches, but studies so far lacked representativity, resolution and standardization. To fill in these gaps, in this study we sequenced a comprehensive collection of Cystoseira s.l. spanning its entire North-east Atlantic range for a ~1200 bp cox1 barcode, and sequenced selected individuals representing major genetic entities for a few additional plastid markers. Phylogeographic, phylogenetic and species delimitation methods revealed 27 Molecular Operational Taxonomic Units, including unaccounted cryptic diversity, and elucidated with unprecedented resolution species compositions and phylogenetic relationships within each genus. Some entities within the lineages Cystoseira compressa/humilis, Ericaria brachycarpa/crinita, E. selaginoides and tophulose Gongolaria, as well as among free-living algae, conflicted with a priori taxonomic assignments, and required the redefinition, reinstatement and recognition of new taxa. For some, diagnostic mutations and biogeography were more useful for species identifications than morphological characters or conventional barcoding gaps. A few species showed narrow geographic ranges and others were the sole representatives of their respective lineages. Several sister-species showed Atlantic vs Mediterranean complementary ranges. Phylogenetic signal of cox1 was nevertheless insuffic