Effect of 5β-dihydrotestosterone on vasodilator function and on cell proliferation.

Aging is one of the main factors associated with cardiovascular diseases. Androgens exert beneficial effects on the cardiovascular system and testosterone (TES) replacement therapy improves cardiometabolic risk factors. However, TES is contraindicated in patients with prostate cancer due to its proliferative effects on prostatic tumor cells.

Carrion ecology in inland aquatic ecosystems: a systematic review.

Carrion ecology, i.e. the decomposition and recycling of dead animals, has traditionally been neglected as a key process in ecosystem functioning.

Groundwater is a hidden global keystone ecosystem.

Groundwater is a vital ecosystem of the global water cycle, hosting unique biodiversity and providing essential services to societies. Despite being the largest unfrozen freshwater resource, in a period of depletion by extraction and pollution, groundwater environments have been repeatedly overlooked in global biodiversity conservation agendas. Disregarding the importance of groundwater as an ecosystem ignores its critical role in preserving surface biomes.

The recovery of European freshwater biodiversity has come to a halt.

Owing to a long history of anthropogenic pressures, freshwater ecosystems are among the most vulnerable to biodiversity loss. Mitigation measures, including wastewater treatment and hydromorphological restoration, have aimed to improve environmental quality and foster the recovery of freshwater biodiversity. Here, using 1,816 time series of freshwater invertebrate communities collected across 22 European countries between 1968 and 2020, we quantified temporal trends in taxonomic and functional diversity and their responses to environmental pressures and gradients.

Role of climatic variability in shaping intraspecific variation of thermal tolerance in Mediterranean water beetles.

The climatic variability hypothesis (CVH) predicts that organisms in more thermally variable environments have wider thermal breadths and higher thermal plasticity than those from more stable environments. However, due to evolutionary trade-offs, taxa with greater absolute thermal limits may have little plasticity of such limits (trade-off hypothesis). The CVH assumes that climatic variability is the ultimate driver of thermal tolerance variation across latitudinal and altitudinal gradients, but average temperature also varies along such gradients.

A horizon scan exercise for aquatic invasive alien species in Iberian inland waters.

As the number of introduced species keeps increasing unabatedly, identifying and prioritising current and potential Invasive Alien Species (IAS) has become essential to manage them. Horizon Scanning (HS), defined as an exploration of potential threats, is considered a fundamental component of IAS management. By combining scientific knowledge on taxa with expert opinion, we identified the most relevant aquatic IAS in the Iberian Peninsula, i.

Climatic stability, not average habitat temperature, determines thermal tolerance of subterranean beetles.

The climatic variability hypothesis predicts the evolution of species with wide thermal tolerance ranges in environments with variable temperatures, and the evolution of thermal specialists in thermally stable environments. In caves, the extent of spatial and temporal thermal variability experienced by taxa decreases with their degree of specialization to deep subterranean habitats. We use phylogenetic generalized least squares to model the relationship among thermal tolerance (upper lethal limits), subterranean specialization (estimated using ecomorphological traits), and habitat temperature in 16 beetle species of the tribe Leptodirini (Leiodidae).

Beyond survival experiments: using biomarkers of oxidative stress and neurotoxicity to assess vulnerability of subterranean fauna to climate change.

Accurate assessments of species vulnerability to climate change need to consider the physiological capacity of organisms to deal with temperature changes and identify early signs of thermally induced stress. Oxidative stress biomarkers and acetylcholinesterase activity are useful proxies of stress at the cellular and nervous system level. Such responses are especially relevant for poor dispersal organisms with limited capacity for behavioural thermoregulation, like deep subterranean species.

Heat tolerance and acclimation capacity in subterranean arthropods living under common and stable thermal conditions.

Cave-dwelling ectotherms, which have evolved for millions of years under stable thermal conditions, could be expected to have adjusted their physiological limits to the narrow range of temperatures they experience and to be highly vulnerable to global warming. However, most of the few existing studies on thermal tolerance in subterranean invertebrates highlight that despite the fact that they show lower heat tolerance than most surface-dwelling species, their upper thermal limits are generally not adjusted to ambient temperature. The question remains to what extent this pattern is common across subterranean invertebrates.

Effects of salinity changes on aquatic organisms in a multiple stressor context.

Under global change, the ion concentration of aquatic ecosystems is changing worldwide. Many freshwater ecosystems are being salinized by anthropogenic salt inputs, whereas many naturally saline ones are being diluted by agricultural drainages. This occurs concomitantly with changes in other stressors, which can result in additive, antagonistic or synergistic effects on organisms.

Do all roads lead to Rome? Exploring community trajectories in response to anthropogenic salinization and dilution of rivers.

Abiotic stress shapes how communities assemble and support ecological functions. However, it remains unclear whether artificially increasing or decreasing stress levels would lead to communities assembling predictably along a single axis of variation or along multiple context-dependent trajectories of change. In response to stress intensity alterations, we hypothesize that a single trajectory of change occurs when trait-based assembly prevails, while multiple trajectories of change arise when dispersal-related processes modify colonization and trait-filtering dynamics.

Insect communities in saline waters consist of realized but not fundamental niche specialists.

Considering how organisms adapt to stress is essential if we are to anticipate biological responses to global change in ecosystems. Communities in stressful environments can potentially be assembled by specialists (i.e.

Environmental niche unfilling but limited options for range expansion by active dispersion in an alien cavity-nesting wasp.

Background: Predicting the patterns of range expansion of alien species is central to develop effective strategies for managing potential biological invasions. Here, we present a study on the potential distribution of the American cavity-nesting, Orthoptera-hunting and solitary wasp, Isodontia mexicana (Hymenoptera: Sphecidae), which was first detected as alien species in France in 1960 and now is present in many European countries. After having updated its current distribution, we estimated the environmental space (based on bioclimatic data and altitude) occupied by the species and subsequently predicted its environmental potential distribution under both present and future climatic conditions at global scale.

Matches and mismatches between conservation investments and biodiversity values in the European Union.

Recently, the European Commission adopted a new strategy to halt the loss of biodiversity. Member states are expected to favor a more effective collection and redistribution of European Union (EU) funds under the current Multiannual Financial Framework for 2014-2020. Because of the large spatial variation in the distribution of biodiversity and conservation needs at the continental scale, EU instruments should ensure that countries with higher biodiversity values get more funds and resources for the conservation than other countries.

Thermal niche estimators and the capability of poor dispersal species to cope with climate change.

For management strategies in the context of global warming, accurate predictions of species response are mandatory. However, to date most predictions are based on niche (bioclimatic) models that usually overlook biotic interactions, behavioral adjustments or adaptive evolution, and assume that species can disperse freely without constraints. The deep subterranean environment minimises these uncertainties, as it is simple, homogeneous and with constant environmental conditions.

Similarity in the difference: changes in community functional features along natural and anthropogenic stress gradients.

The effect of stressors on biodiversity can vary in relation to the degree to which biological communities have adapted over evolutionary time. We compared the responses of functional features of stream insect communities along chronic stress gradients with contrasting time persistence. Water salinity and land use intensification were used as examples of natural (long-term persistent) and anthropogenic (short-term persistent) stressors, respectively.

Atlas of Iberian water beetles (ESACIB database).

The ESACIB ('EScarabajos ACuáticos IBéricos') database is provided, including all available distributional data of Iberian and Balearic water beetles from the literature up to 2013, as well as from museum and private collections, PhD theses, and other unpublished sources. The database contains 62,015 records with associated geographic data (10×10 km UTM squares) for 488 species and subspecies of water beetles, 120 of them endemic to the Iberian Peninsula and eight to the Balearic Islands. This database was used for the elaboration of the "Atlas de los Coleópteros Acuáticos de España Peninsular".

Lack of evolutionary adjustment to ambient temperature in highly specialized cave beetles.

Background: A key question in evolutionary biology is the relationship between species traits and their habitats. Caves offer an ideal model to test the adjustment of species to their surrounding temperature, as they provide homogeneous and simple environments. We compared two species living under different thermal conditions within a lineage of Pyrenean beetles highly modified for the subterranean life since the Miocene.

Thermal niche evolution and geographical range expansion in a species complex of western Mediterranean diving beetles.

Background: Species thermal requirements are one of the principal determinants of their ecology and biogeography, although our understanding of the interplay between these factors is limited by the paucity of integrative empirical studies. Here we use empirically collected thermal tolerance data in combination with molecular phylogenetics/phylogeography and ecological niche modelling to study the evolution of a clade of three western Mediterranean diving beetles, the Agabus brunneus complex.

Results: The preferred mitochondrial DNA topology recovered A.