In mid-May, NASA announced the discovery of 1,284 new planets, thanks to the Kepler space telescope. Quite a lot... The globalization seems to make the Earth small and small, but the known Universe grows fast.
“It spreads like wildfire,” says Joan Pino, CREAF Deputy Director, about the case of the Asian hornet. This invasive species arrived to Spain in 2010 from France and today it has become established across almost all of the Northern Iberian Peninsula. In April 2015 the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Environment drew up a plan for combatting this worrisome unwelcome guest.
For marmots, infidelity is a way for dominant females to promote genetic diversity and increase the chances of survival of their young. When the dominant partner is genetically very similar, the female opts to reproduce with other males. This behavior could help create a more diverse genetic line and genetics that are better able to respond to parasites.
Today, May 25, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) publishes the Global Soil Biodiversity Atlas, first-ever of this topic. It’s a European Comission iniciative, available and free for everyone who is interested in. This atlas maps the soil biodiversity of the entire planet by providing an exhaustive analysis of soil organisms and the threats it has to face. Soil management could help the mitigation of the effects of climate change.
CREAF is among the 500 best international institutions of the world in six diferent indicators according to this ranking. Of the 244 ranked Spanish entities, four indicators place CREAF within the first 30 ranked positions
We seek a candidate to apply for a 4 years doctoral fellowship to carry on in the CIBIO (Vila do Conde, Porto) and CREAF (Bellaterra, Barcelona) within the Doctoral Programme in Biodiversity, Genetics and Evolution (BIODIV), funded by the “Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia” (Portugal).
In this post-Sant Jordi commentary, I should like to refer to just a few books of great quality and interest on some perhaps less well-known traveler scientists.
