All the members are part of MedRecover research group.
Principal investigators
Full Professor (UB)
Cristina Linares is an Full professor at the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences and Researcher at the Institut de Recerca de la Biodiversitat at the University of Barcelona (UB). In 2019 she was awarded with an ICREA Academia. After earned her PhD in 2006 at the UB, she did different research stages at renowned international centres at USA, France and Australia. In 2010, she returned to the UB first as Juan de la Cierva and then as Ramon y Cajal. To date, she has supervised 7 PhD students and three postdoctoral researchers. Cristina teaches several courses at undergraduate and master level related to marine ecology and conservation.
Her research interests mainly focused on understanding the responses of marine benthic ecosystems to global change combining long-term series data, experimental studies using in situ and aquaria experiments as well as modeling tools. Most of the results intended to contribute to the conservation of marine ecosystems and this is reflected in several activities of knowledge transfer to national and international entities and public administrations.
Selected articles:
- Medrano, A; Hereu, B; Cleminson, M; Pagès-Escolà, M; Rovira, G; Solà, J; Linares, C. (2020) From marine deserts to algal beds: Treptacantha elegans revegetation to reverse stable degraded ecosystems inside and outside a No-Take marine reserve. Restoration Ecology, DOI: 10.1111/rec.13123.
- Kersting DK, Linares C (2019) Living evidence of a fossil survival strategy raises hope for warming-impacted corals. Science Advances. Vol. 5, no. 10, eaax2950.
- Arafeh-Dalmau N, Linares C, Hereu B, Caceres-Escobar H, Biggs D, Possingham H (2019) Protect Catalonian's coral despite politics. Science Vol. 363, Issue 6423, pp. 135-136.
- Capdevila P, Hereu B, Salguero-Gómez R, Rovira G, Medrano A, Cebrián E, Garrabou J, Kersting D, Linares C (2019) Warming impacts on early life stages increase the vulnerability and delay the population recovery of a long‐lived habitat‐forming macroalga. Journal of Ecology 107, 1129-1140.
- Pagès-Escolà M, Hereu B, Garrabou J, Montero-Serra I, Gori A, Gómez-Gras D, Figuerola B, Linares C. (2018) Divergent responses to warming of two common co-occurring Mediterranean bryozoans. Scientific reports 8(1), 17455.
- Montero-Serra, I.; Garrabou, J.; Doak, D.F.; Figuerola, L.; Hereu, B.; Ledoux, J.B.; Linares, C. (2018) Accounting for life-history strategies and timescales in marine restoration. Conservation Letters 11(1), e12341.
Contact: cristinalinares@ub.edu
Web: www.cristinalinares.info
Twitter: @crislinaresibz
Researcher (ICM-CSIC)
I'm currently a senior researcher at Institute of Marine Sciences from the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) in Barcelona (Spain). Prior to this, I was a researcher at the Centre d'Oceanologie de Marseille (France), which is associated with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). I'm currently the coordinator of the Marine Biodiversity Conservation Group MedRecover (www.medrecover.org). I'm applying a multidisciplinary approach to the study of climate change effects in the conservation of Mediterranean marine biodiversity. In this framework I devoted most of my career in analysing the role of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) as tools to counteract the negative effects of human activities. I have been also especially active in developing collaborative initiatives to cope with large scales and long-term scales unavoidable for the study of global change effects. As main milestones of these initiatives I'm coordinating and promoting collaborative networks of observation of current warming trend in the Mediterranean mainly supported by MPA's managers (www.t-mednet.org) and volunteers (www.seawatchers.net). The ultimate objective of my research is to enhance science based management strategies to inform adaptation plans of coastal areas as well as the sustainable use of marine resources.
Selected articles:
- Montero-Serra I, Garrabou J, Doak D, Hereu B, Ledoux JB, Linares C (2019) Accounting for life-history strategies and timescales in marine restoration. Conservation letters 11(1): 1-9.
- Cramer W, Guiot J, Fader M, Garrabou J, Gattuso JP, Iglesias A, Lange MF, Lionello P, Llasat MC, Paz S, Peñuelas J, Snoussi M, Toreti A, Tsimplis M, Xoplaki E (2018) Climate change and inter-connected risks to sustainable development in the Mediterranean. Nature Climate Change 8: 972-980.
- Bates AE, Helmuth B, Burrows MT, Duncan MI, Garrabou J, Guy-Haim T, Lima F, Queiros AM, Seabra R, Marsh R, Belmaker J, Bensoussan N, Dong Y, Mazaris AD, Smale D, Wahl M, Rilov G (2018) Biologists ignore ocean weather at their peril. Nature 560: 299-301.
- Garrabou J, Sala E, Linares C, Ledoux JB, Montero-Serra I, Dominici JM, Kipson S, Teixidó N, Cebrian E, Kersting DK, Harmelin JG (2017) Re-shifting the ecological baseline for the overexploited Mediterranean red coral. Scientific Reports 7:42404. DOI: 10.1038/srep42404
- Crisci C, Ledoux JB, Mokhtar-Jamaï K, Bally M, Bensoussan N, Aurelle D, Cebrian E, Coma R, Feral JP, La Rivière M, Linares C, López-Sendino P, Marschal C, Ribes M, Teixidó N, Zuberer F, Garrabou J (2017) Regional and local environmental conditions do not shape the response to warming of a marine habitat-forming species. Scientific Reports 7, Article number: 5069. DOI :10.1038/s41598-017-05220-4
- Garrabou, J, Coma, R, Bally, M, Bensoussan, N, Chevaldonné, P, Cigliano, M, Diaz, D, Harmelin, JG, Gambi, MC, Kersting DK, Lejeusne, C, Linares, C, Marschal, C, Pérez, T, Ribes, M, Romano JC, Serrano E, Teixido N, Torrents, O, Zabala, M, Zuberer, F, Cerrano, C (2009) Mass mortality in northwestern Mediterranean rocky benthic communities: effects of the 2003 heat wave. Global Change Biology 15: 1090-1103.
Contact: garrabou@icm.csic.es
Twitter: @JGarrabou
ResearchGate: Joaquim Garrabou
Google Schoolar: Joaquim Garrabou
Post-docs
Postdoc JdC-Incorporación (ICM-CSIC)
Blanca Figuerola is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC) of Barcelona. She has been working in different fields including taxonomy, biodiversity, ecology and paleobiology. Apart from her ongoing taxonomic and biodiversity studies in bryozoans, her current work aims to 1) deepen current understanding of the skeletal structure, mineralogy and geochemistry of benthic marine calcifiers in order to identify taxa that may be particularly vulnerable to climate change and may make suitable indicators to monitor the effects of near-future changes and 2) use their fossil record to reconstruct natural and human-driven changes (e.g. ocean warming and acidification, hypoxia) in coastal ecosystems and be able to make better predictions of the effects of future climate change on benthic communities.
She obtained her B.Sc. Biology and PhD at the University of Barcelona. Her thesis focused on presenting new data on species richness and the spatial patterns of bryozoans from poorly known regions and evaluating the ecological and applied effects of their natural compounds. After her PhD, she has received several grants/fellowships including competitive fellowships such as COMNAP Antarctic Fellowship (2016), SENACYT- STRI (2017) and Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación (2018). During her postdoctoral research career, she has worked at renowned international research institutions such as Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (Panama) and Australian Antarctic Division (Australia). There, she has participated in numerous multidisciplinary projects involving fieldwork in Antarctic, temperate and tropical regions. She has also be involved in several science outreach programs about marine conservation at several public institutions, companies and NGOs (e.g. Plancton, SUBMON and GEPEC).
Selected articles:
- Figuerola B, Avila C (2019) The phylum Bryozoa as a promising source of anticancer drugs. Marine Drugs 17(8): 477.
- Figuerola B, Gore DB, Johnstone G, Stark JS (2019) Spatio-temporal variation of skeletal Mg-calcite in Antarctic marine calcifiers. PLOS ONE 14(5): e02120231.
- Figuerola B, Gordon DP, Cristobo J (2018) New deep Cheilostomata (Bryozoa) species from the Southwestern Atlantic: shedding light in the dark. Zootaxa 4375 (2): 211-249.
- Figuerola B, Barnes DKA, Brickle P, Brewin PD (2017) Bryozoan diversity around the Falkland and South Georgia Islands: Overcoming Antarctic barriers. Marine Environmental Research 126: 81-94.
- Figuerola B, Angulo-Preckler C, Núñez-Pons L, Moles J, Sala-Comorera L, García-Aljaro C, Blanch AR, Avila A (2017) Experimental evidence of chemical defence mechanisms in Antarctic bryozoans. Marine Environmental Research 129: 68-75.
- Figuerola B, Kuklinski P, Taylor PD (2015) Depth patterns in Antarctic bryozoan skeletal Mg/Ca: can they provide an analogue for future environmental changes? Marine Ecology Progress Series 540: 109-120.
- Figuerola B, Sala-Comorera L, Angulo-Preckler C, Vázquez J, Montes MJ, García-Aljaro C, Mercadé E, Blanch AR, Avila A (2014) Antimicrobial activity of Antarctic bryozoans: an ecological perspective with potential for clinical applications. Marine Environmental Research 101: 52-9.
- Figuerola B, Monleón-Getino T, Ballesteros M, Avila C (2012) Spatial patterns and diversity of bryozoan communities from the Southern Ocean: South Shetland Islands, Bouvet Island and Eastern Weddell Sea. Systematics and Biodiversity 10 (1): 109-123.
Contact: bfiguerola@gmail.com
ResearchGate: Blanca Figuerola
Google Schoolar: Blanca Figuerola
ORCID: 0000-0003-4731-9337
Postdoc (UB)
Cristina Linares is an Full professor at the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences and Researcher at the Institut de Recerca de la Biodiversitat at the University of Barcelona (UB). In 2019 she was awarded with an ICREA Academia. After earned her PhD in 2006 at the UB, she did different research stages at renowned international centres at USA, France and Australia. In 2010, she returned to the UB first as Juan de la Cierva and then as Ramon y Cajal. To date, she has supervised 7 PhD students and three postdoctoral researchers. Cristina teaches several courses at undergraduate and master level related to marine ecology and conservation.
Her research interests mainly focused on understanding the responses of marine benthic ecosystems to global change combining long-term series data, experimental studies using in situ and aquaria experiments as well as modeling tools. Most of the results intended to contribute to the conservation of marine ecosystems and this is reflected in several activities of knowledge transfer to national and international entities and public administrations.
Selected articles:
- Medrano, A; Hereu, B; Cleminson, M; Pagès-Escolà, M; Rovira, G; Solà, J; Linares, C. (2020) From marine deserts to algal beds: Treptacantha elegans revegetation to reverse stable degraded ecosystems inside and outside a No-Take marine reserve. Restoration Ecology, DOI: 10.1111/rec.13123.
- Kersting DK, Linares C (2019) Living evidence of a fossil survival strategy raises hope for warming-impacted corals. Science Advances. Vol. 5, no. 10, eaax2950.
- Arafeh-Dalmau N, Linares C, Hereu B, Caceres-Escobar H, Biggs D, Possingham H (2019) Protect Catalonian's coral despite politics. Science Vol. 363, Issue 6423, pp. 135-136.
- Capdevila P, Hereu B, Salguero-Gómez R, Rovira G, Medrano A, Cebrián E, Garrabou J, Kersting D, Linares C (2019) Warming impacts on early life stages increase the vulnerability and delay the population recovery of a long‐lived habitat‐forming macroalga. Journal of Ecology 107, 1129-1140.
- Pagès-Escolà M, Hereu B, Garrabou J, Montero-Serra I, Gori A, Gómez-Gras D, Figuerola B, Linares C. (2018) Divergent responses to warming of two common co-occurring Mediterranean bryozoans. Scientific reports 8(1), 17455.
- Montero-Serra, I.; Garrabou, J.; Doak, D.F.; Figuerola, L.; Hereu, B.; Ledoux, J.B.; Linares, C. (2018) Accounting for life-history strategies and timescales in marine restoration. Conservation Letters 11(1), e12341.
Contact: cristinalinares@ub.edu
Web: www.cristinalinares.info
Twitter: @crislinaresibz
Alba Medrano is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology, and Environmental Sciences at the University of Barcelona. Her main research interest is centered on the ecology and marine conservation of coastal benthic communities. Currently, her research focuses on understanding the consequences of marine heat waves on Mediterranean benthic species, mainly by combining long-term environmental and ecological datasets with biological monitoring. Alba has been involved in long-term biological monitoring of Medes Islands Protected Area, Cap de Creus Natural Park, and Port-Cros Natural Park since 2015.
Alba started her scientist career in Chile where she worked as a research assistant in diverse projects evaluating ecological resistance and resilience to extreme climate events on corals and macroalgae in Central Chile and Easter Island between 2010 and 2014. Her PhD thesis addressed long-term ecological changes of coastal macroalgal beds in the Medes Islands Protected Area and it also aimed to enlarge the current knowledge of the role and effectiveness of Marine Protected Areas and active restoration actions as conservation tools to preserve macroalgal forests.
Selected articles:
- Medrano, A., Hereu, B., Cleminson, M., Pagès-Escolà, M., Rovira, G., Solà, J., and Linares, C. (2020) From marine deserts to algal beds: Treptacantha elegans revegetation to reverse stable degraded ecosystems inside and outside a No-take marine reserve. Restoration Ecology, 10.1002.
- Medrano, A., Linares, C., Aspillaga, E., Capdevila, P., Montero-Serra, I., Pagès-Escolà, M., Zabala, M., and Hereu, B. (2020) Long-term monitoring of temperate macroalgal assemblages inside and outside a No take marine reserve. Marine Environmental Research, 153, 104826.
- Medrano, A., Linares, C., Aspillaga, E., Capdevila, P., Montero-Serra, I., Pagès-Escolà, M., and Hereu, B. (2019) No-take marine reserves control the recovery of sea urchin populations after mass mortality events. Marine Environmental Research, 145, 147-154.
- Buck-Wiese H., Burgués I., Medrano A., Navarrete-Fernandez T., Garcia M., Wieters EA. (2018) Patterns in sexual reproduction of the dominant scleractinian corals at Rapa Nui (Easter Island): Pocillopora verrucosa and Porites lobata. Aquatic Biology, 27:1-11.
- Wieters EA., Medrano A., Pérez-Matus A. (2014) Functional community structure of shallow-hard bottom communities at Rapa Nui, Easter Island. Latin American Journal of Aquatic Research, 42[4]: 827 - 844.
- Wieters EA., Medrano A., Quiroga G. (2013) Spatial variation in photosynthetic recovery of intertidal turf algae from acute UVB and temperature stress associated with low tides along the central coast of Chile. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, 449, 340-348.
Contact: amedrano@ub.edu
ResearchGate: Alba Medrano
Researcher (ICM-CSIC)
Diego K. Kersting is a Juan de la Cierva-Incoporación researcher at the Departament de Biologia Evolutiva, Ecologia i Ciències Ambientals of the Universitat de Barcelona. His research is focused on vulnerable species and habitats, global change impacts on marine ecosystems, and the role of MPAs as sentinel sites and laboratories to better understand responses and recovery processes. Diego established and runs several long-term monitorings (>20 yr) in the Columbretes Islands MPA (NW Mediterranean), including water temperature and warming impacts on corals, which are acknowledged among the longest of their kind in the Mediterranean Sea. This information is allowing to describe the long-term responses of benthic organisms to anthropogenic warming. In addition, these data series conform a unique calibration dataset to undertake environmental and ecological paleorreconstructions using coral skeletons, another of Diego's interests, which are allowing to contextualize current changes beyond observational and instrumental data. Before joining the Universitat de Barcelona, Diego worked as a researcher at the Section of Paleontology of the Freie Universität Berlin, as free-lance scientific consultant and as scientific coordinator of the Columbretes Islands MPA.
Selected articles:
- Kersting DK, Linares C (2019) Living evidence of a fossil survival strategy raises hope for warming-affected corals. Science Advances 5:eaax2950.
- Kersting DK, García-March JR (2017) Long-term assessment of recruitment, early stages and population dynamics of the endangered Mediterranean fan mussel Pinna nobilis in the Columbretes Islands (NW Mediterranean). Marine Environmental Research 130:282-292.
- Kersting DK (2015) Cambio climático en el medio marino español: impactos, vulnerabilidad y adaptación. Oficina Española de Cambio Climático, OECC, Ministerio de Agricultura, Alimentación y Medio Ambiente, Madrid. https://www.miteco.gob.es/es/cambio-climatico/temas/impactos-vulnerabilidad-y-adaptacion/kersting_2016_cambio_climatico_medio_marino_tcm30-70535.pdf
- Linares C, Vidal M, Canals M, Kersting DK, Amblas D, Aspillaga E, Cebrian E, Delgado-Huertas A, Díaz D, Garrabou J, Hereu B, Navarro L, Teixidó N, Ballesteros E (2015) Persistent natural acidification drives major distribution shifts in marine benthic ecosystems. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Biological Sciences 282:20150587.
- Kersting DK, Cebrian E, Casado C, Teixidó N, Garrabou J, Linares C (2015) Experimental evidence of the synergistic effects of warming and invasive algae on a temperate reef-builder coral. Scientific Reports 5:18635.
- Kersting DK, Teixidó N, Linares C (2014) Recruitment and mortality of the temperate coral Cladocora caespitosa: implications for the recovery of endangered populations. Coral Reefs 33: 403-407.
- Kersting DK, Ballesteros E, De Caralt S, Linares C (2014) Invasive macrophytes in a marine reserve (Columbretes Islands, NW Mediterranean): spread dynamics and interactions with the endemic scleractinian coral Cladocora caespitosa. Biological Invasions 16: 1599-1610.
- Kersting DK, Casado C, López-Legentil S, Linares C (2013) Unexpected patterns in the sexual reproduction of the Mediterranean scleractinian coral Cladocora caespitosa. Marine Ecology Progress Series 486: 165-171.
- Kersting DK, Bensoussan N, Linares C (2013) Long-term responses of the endemic reef-builder Cladocora caespitosa to Mediterranean warming. Plos ONE 8: e70820.
- Garrabou J et al. (Kersting DK among authors) (2009) Mass mortalities in Northwestern Mediterranean rocky benthic communities: effects of the 2003 heat wave. Global Change Biology 15: 1090-1103.
Contact: diegokersting@gmail.com
Postdoc (UB)
Since February 2020, she is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences of the University of Barcelona. She is interested in understanding marine ecological patterns and their underlying mechanisms under global change scenario. Her overall research goal is understanding the response of marine communities to different stressors to anticipate the potential effects of global change and improve conservation and management actions of marine populations. At global scale, she is interested in quantifying past, extant and future macroecological diversity patterns and their environmental drivers to identify climatic refugees in marine systems. At local scale, her studies are focused in the study of population dynamics, distributional patterns and thermal tolerances preferences to unravel the winners and losers of climate change. Recently, she defended her PhD thesis focused in the study of bryozoan population dynamics, the impact of human threats on marine communities, and the restoration of natural populations in marine protected areas.
Selected articles:
- Pagès-Escolà, M., Bock, P., Gordon, D. Wilson, S. Linares, C. Hereu, B. Costello, M. (2020) Progress in the discovery of living and fossil bryozoans. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 635, 71-75.
- Pagès-Escolà, M., Hereu, B, Rovira, G, Medrano, A, Aspillaga, E, Capdevila, P, Linares, C. (2020) Unravelling the population dynamics of the Mediterranean bryozoan Pentapora fascialis to assess its role as an indicator of recreational diving for adaptive management of marine protected areas. Ecological Indicators, 109, 105781.
- Pagès-Escolà, M, Linares, C, Gómez-Gras, D, Medrano, A, Hereu, B. (2020) Assessing the effectiveness of restoration actions for Bryozoans: the case of the Mediterranean Pentapora fascialis. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater, Ecosystems 30(1), 8-19.
- Pagès-Escolà M., Hereu B., Garrabou J., Montero-Serra I., Gori A., Gómez-Gras D., Figuerola B., Linares C. (2018) Divergent responses to warming of two common co-occurring Mediterranean bryozoans. Scientific reports, 8(1), 17455.
- Pagès-Escolà, M. (2019) New insights into the ecology and conservation of bryozoans: from global diversity patterns to the responses to anthropogenic stressors in the Mediterranean Sea. University of Barcelona.
Contact: mpagesescola@gmail.com
Technicians
Technician (ICM-CSIC)
Paula López-Sendino is a graduate in Biology by the University of Barcelona, and works as a technician at the ICM-CSIC since 2008. She is actually involved in Marine Citizen Science program (www.observadoresdelmar.es) and MPA-Engage Project. Prior to these, she has mainly worked in laboratory duties related to microsatellites of Corallium rubrum, Paramuricea clavata and Astroides callycularis. She has also been involved in thermotolerance experiments of several benthic species, and DNA/RNA extraction of P.clavata for Genome and Microbiome analysis. Furthemore, she uses Photogrammetry to calculate size structure of red coral populations from Scandola or Medes Marine Reserve, and performs scuba diving field work.
She had also previously studied the symbionts of several Mediterranean sponges with molecular techniques (PCR, clonning, TRFLP'S, Card-FISH...) and confocal microscopy. Prior to this, she had participated in the long-term biological monitoring at the Medes Islands, Montgrí and Baix Ter Natural Park, Cap de Creus Natural Park and Port-Cros National Park (France) for the Ecology Department at the UB. She had also earlier on worked at the Center for Advanced Studies in Blanes CEAB-CSIC on the invasive seaweeds monitoring programme along the Catalan coast and Cabrera National Park and the EU Water Framework Directive in Catalonia and Balearic Islands for the Catalan Water Agency.
Selected articles:
- Mariani S, Ocaña-Vicente O, López-Sendino P, Garcia M, Ricart AM, Garrabou J, Ballesteros E (2018) The zooxanthellate scleractinian coral Oulastrea crispata (Lamarck, 1816), an overlooked newcomer in the Mediterranean Sea? Mediterranean Marine Science, 19(3), 589-597. DOI: 10.12681/mms.16986
- Cebrian E, Vila M, Tomas F, López-Sendino P, Ballesteros E (2018) Biodiversity facilitates invasion success in a benthic seaweed forest. Biological Invasions 20: 2839-2848. DOI: 10.1007/s10530-018-1736-x
- Crisci C, Ledoux J-B, Mokhtar-Jamaï K, Bally M, Bensoussan N, Aurelle D, Cebrian E, Coma R, Feral J P, La Rivière M, Linares C, López-Sendino P, Marschal C, Ribes M, Teixidó N, Zuberer F, Garrabou J (2017) Regional and local environmental conditions do not shape the response to warming of a marine habitat-forming species. Scientific Reports, 7:5069 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-05220-4
- Erwin P, Coma R, López-Sendino P, Serrano E, Ribes M (2015) Stable symbionts across the HMA-LMA dichotomy: low seasonal and interannual variation in sponge-associated bacteria from taxonomically diverse hosts. FEMS Microbiology Ecology 91 (10) fiv115.
- Ribes M, Jiménez E, Yahel G, López‐Sendino P, Díez B, Massana R, Coma R (2012) Functional convergence of microbes associated with temperate marine sponges. Environmental microbiology 14 (5) 1224-1239.
Contact: paula.lopez.sendino@gmail.com
Twitter: @Paula_LopSen
PhD students in course
PhD student (ICM-CSIC)
Daniel is a PhD candidate at the Institut de Ciències del Mar and University of Barcelona. His PhD Project aims to shed light on the response of the coralligenous assemblages to climate change, improving our capacity to predict the future trajectories of this habitat in the NW Mediterranean Sea. To achieve these goals, his work focuses on three main aspects 1) Conducting thermotolerance experiments on representative species of the coralligenous community, 2) Studying their capability to recover against different impacts, and 3) Analysing the linkages between functional and demographic traits of these species, and their vulnerability to ocean warming. Taken together, this information will help to improve the management and conservation strategies for the coralligenous in the current framework of recurrent marine heatwaves.
His research is supported by a FPU scholarship granted by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, and and advised by Dr. Joaquim Garrabou (ICM-CSIC) and Dra Cristina Linares (UB).
Daniel is graduated in Biology at Universidad Complutense de Madrid (July 2014), with a Master degree in Microbiology and Parasitology; Research and Development obtained in the same university (July 2015). In addition, thanks to a JAE-Intro fellowship, he participated in a project at IMEDEA institute, located in Balearic Islands, where he evaluated the response of seagrass meadows to global warming and ocean acidification. Eventually, he also worked on conducting and supervising recreational diving activities in Mabul Island, (Malaysia), where he played an active role in raising awareness in local communities on coral reef conservation.
Selected articles:
- Gómez-Gras D, Linares C, de Caralt S, Cebrian E, Montero-Serra I, Pagès-Escolà M, López-Sendino P, Garrabou J (2019) Response diversity in Mediterranean coralligenous assemblages facing climate change: Insights from a multispecific thermotolerance experiment. Ecology and Evolution. 9(7): 4168-4180. DOI: 10.1002/ece3.5045
- Garrabou J, Gómez-Gras D, Ledoux J-B, Linares C, Bensoussan N, López-Sendino P, … Harmelin JG (2019) Collaborative Database to Track Mass Mortality Events in the Mediterranean Sea. Front. Mar. Sci. 6:707. DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2019.00707
Pagès-Escolà, M., Hereu, B., Garrabou, J., Montero-Serra, I., Gori, A., Gómez-Gras, D.,… Linares, C. (2018) Divergent responses to warming of two common co-occurring Mediterranean bryozoans. Scientific Reports., 8, 174555. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-36094-9
Contact: danielgomez@icm.csic.es
Twitter: @danigomezgras
ResearchGate: Daniel Gómez Gras
PhD student (UB)
Laura Figuerola Ferrando is a Ph.D. aspirant student at the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences of the University of Barcelona. Her proposed Ph.D. supervisors are Dra. Cristina Linares and Dr. Joaquim Garrabou, and it will be developed under the National Project "Mediterranean coastal ecosystems in the Anthropocene: how marine heat waves are transforming marine benthic habitats? (HEATMED)". The thesis project aims to contribute to the comprehension of the biological impacts of Marine heatwaves - one of the recurrent impacts of global warming - in the Mediterranean Sea. It will quantify these biological impacts at different taxonomic levels and geographic scales, as well as the ecosystems resilience and the long-term response of the habitat-forming marine species affected by mass mortality events. It will also investigate the role and efficiency of Marine Protected Areas in front of this scenario of extreme climate events, evaluating the resilience and genetic diversity of these structural species. This work will involve the role of marine citizen science, through different platforms, as Seawatchers, and enhancing communicative campaigns and awareness events.
She is actually working in a database of the distribution and demographic data of habitat-forming marine invertebrate species from Mediterranean coralligenous assemblages, under the project "European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODNet)", with the supervision of Dra. Cristina Linares. Furthermore, she is working in a metanalysis of the global genetic patterns of habitat-forming marine species.
Previously, Laura collaborated with Dr. Ignasi Montero Ph.D.'s, doing experiments with Corallium rubrum and Paramuricea Clavata in the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM - CSIC), analyzing photography's, and calculating C. rubrum height.
Selected articles:
- Montero-Serra I, Garrabou J, Doak D. F, Figuerola L, Hereu B, Ledoux J. B, Linares C (2018) Accounting for life‐history strategies and timescales in marine restoration. Conservation Letters, 11(1), e12341.
Contact: lfiguerola16@gmail.com