http://hdl.handle.net/10498/6632 2026-09-21T18:47:12Z http://hdl.handle.net/10498/39618 Multiple Sustainable Practices Are Crucial for Enhancing the Provisioning of Agroecosystem Services Worldwide Medrano, Luna; Ros, Margarita; Sáez Sandino, Tadeo; Zhou, Guiyao; Tao, Dongxue; Zhai, Kaiyan; Yin, Yue; Zhou, Tao; Revillini, Daniel Philip; Pascual, Jose Antonio; Sánchez Rodríguez, Antonio Rafael; Ochoa Hueso, Raúl; Alguacil, María del Mar; Sacristán, Daniel; Alejandre, Javier; del Río, Gema; Rillig, Matthias C.; Delgado Baquerizo, Manuel Feeding the largest share of the global population, cereal production must enhance sustainability while ensuring food security under global change. Unfortunately, the number of sustainable practices needed to support production, ecosystem services and land conservation remains virtually unknown. We compiled a database of 1570 observations from 349 sites in 57 countries to assess how the number of sustainable practices influences multiple ecosystem services. Our findings reveal that a high number of sustainable practices is crucial for enhancing agroecosystem services such as soil carbon storage, fertility and microbial habitat while supporting yield. Sustainable practices such as crop rotation, limited tillage and incorporation of crop residues were especially important. North America, Eastern Europe and China were particularly dependent on the use of multiple sustainable practices to maintain ecosystem services. Findings underscore the need for integrative strategies employing multiple sustainable practices for mitigating global change, ensuring food security and sustaining ecosystems. 2025-12-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10498/39574 Warming Fluctuations Strengthen the Photo-Phagotrophic Coupling in Mixoplanktonic Protists Cabrerizo, Marco J.; González Olalla, Juan Manuel; Medina-Sánchez, Juan Manuel; Vila-Duplá, María; Carrillo, Presentación Mixoplankton, a major trophic group in aquatic ecosystems, are being affected by global warming. However, most studies on temperature effects use constant mean conditions, overlooking how short-term thermal fluctuations could deviate from climate projections and impact this group. We experimentally quantified how increasing amplitudes of warming fluctuation (± 1, 3, and 5 °C) alter carbon-specific electron transport (ETRc), net photosynthesis (Pc), respiration (Rc), phagotrophy (Phc), carbon use efficiency (CUE), and growth (µ) in four protist species (three mixoplanktonic and one strict phototroph). We observed a consistent positive link between photosynthetic efficiency (Pc:ETRc ratio) and Phc, and a shift towards a strengthening of the phagotrophy (Pc:ETRc / Phc ratio) with greater thermal fluctuation. A potential explanation is a selective behavior aimed to increase phagotrophy to obtain inorganic nutrients through ingested prey internal re-cycling rather than relying on the environment, to support an enhanced photosynthetic efficiency and growth. An enhanced, coupled photo-phagotrophy activity could boost mixoplankton competitiveness compared to phytoplankton. Our findings underscore the need to incorporate trophic flexibility and its interaction with environmental variability into trait-based models to better predict community dynamics, biogeochemical cycling, and food web structure in aquatic ecosystems. 2025-11-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10498/39549 Benthic assemblage responses to different sources of macrophyte detritus using contrasting methodological approaches Franco Rodil, Iván; Preston, Roxana; Kahma, Tuomas I.; Gustafsson, Camilla; Norkko, Alf Highly productive coastal vegetated habitats export macrophyte subsidies to adjacent shallow bare sediments, delivering detrital matter to a diverse group of co-occurring benthic consumers that rely heavily on these allochthonous food sources. We studied the effects of detrital subsidies composed of three macrophyte species, Fucus vesiculosus, Cladophora glomerata, and Zostera marina, on the composition of shallow benthic bacterial and faunal assemblages. Biodiversity estimates were obtained through traditional (macrofauna) and eDNA (bacteria, meiofauna, and macrofauna) approaches to characterise the benthic assemblages associated with the detritus. Benthic bacterial assemblage changed in response to the availability of different types of detritus. The meiofauna assemblage composition shifted when comparing the macrophyte detritus and the bare sediment over time. The biodiversity of the macrofauna assemblage estimated using the traditional method showed, unlike the eDNA method, a clear response to the presence of macrophyte detritus. Despite the disparity in the results between the traditional and the eDNA approaches, we found similar relationships and trends between the different benthic groups when using macrofauna abundance data from both methods. In general, more degraded and labile detritus with a high diversity of bacteria and meiofauna triggered macrofauna abundance and diversity. Consequently, a multi-approach design can be implemented to better understand the relationships between different benthic assemblages and the influence of macrophyte subsidies on the structure and functioning of shallow soft-sediment habitats. An ecological understanding of the effects of different detritus sources on benthic assemblages is highly relevant due to the predicted global change scenario of decreasing macrophyte diversity, potentially modifying the amounts and types of detritus reaching recipient habitats with cascading effects on detritus-dependent assemblages 2025-11-20T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10498/39541 Numerical simulations of non-buoyant plastic dispersion around the Iberian Peninsula Blanco Vime, Jorge A.; Morales Caselles, María del Carmen; Smith, Gregory C.; Howton, Katrina; Veillard, Pierre; Faugère, Yannice; Mulet, Sandrine; Morales Maqueda, Miguel Angel The continuous release and accumulation of plastics in the ocean is a major environmental concern as shown by the ongoing negotiations for a Global Plastics Treaty led by the United Nations. Numerical models have proven to be valuable tools to improve our knowledge about how marine plastics disperse, identifying, for example, accumulation areas and the pathways followed by plastics to reach them. While models have been widely used for studying floating plastic, there are fewer studies focused on plastic accumulation on the seafloor. In this study, we used a 3D Eulerian model to predict the accumulation patterns of non-floating plastics around the Iberian Peninsula. We selected four of the most common types of plastics and distinguished two scenarios: one considering only plastics from land-based sources and another from sea-based activities. The integrations simulate the dispersion of plastics over 5 years, starting from a plastic-free sea and modeling the daily introduction of plastics into the sea as would be expected under real conditions. Our experiments show an area virtually free of plastics in the southwestern Gulf of Cadiz, likely due to the magnitude of the deep-sea currents occurring in this region, which prevent plastics from settling down. Non-buoyant plastics originating in the coast tend to accumulate on the continental shelf but can gradually disperse into the open ocean and even reach seamounts, depending on how far these seamounts are from land. The inclusion of sea-sourced plastics results, as expected, in a more widespread distribution of plastics towards the open sea. 2026-03-01T00:00:00Z