Scientific news

The Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC) hosted from January 23 to February 3 the second edition of two specialization courses in Dynamical Oceanography organized by Barcelona Ocean. Graduate students and researchers from several countries met in order to gain knowledge that sets the bases of physical oceanography.
 

Scientist from the Institute of Marine Science (ICM-CSIC), have just published an article that shows how in biology, form and function don’t always go hand in hand when it comes to fish gonads.

This article, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) with Laia Ribas as first author, is based on a study led by Francesc Piferrer in the ICM, in collaboration with scientists from the Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, led by Laszlo Orbán in Singapore.

The second workshop of EukRef, a 18S rRNA Gene Collaborative Annotation Initiative, took place at the ICM from November 28th until December 2nd.

Within the framework of this community-wide effort, this workshop has brought together taxonomists with expertise in individual lineages that span the eukaryotic tree of life to curate reference 18S rDNA sequences of these lineages by incorporating knowledge of phylogenetic, morphological, and/or environmental contextual data.

Human activities disturb the ecosystem balance. Oceans and coasts are not an exception and the degradation of marine habitats threat many species. Restoration of ecosystems is one of the tools, sometimes the only one, to maintain their biodiversity and balance.

Genetic biodiversity of the Liocarcinus depurator crab –known as false swimcrab or soup crab- varies over the years and responding to the Atlantic water entering in the Mediterranean, according to a study published in the journal Scientific Reports  and directed by Professor Marta Pascual, from the Department of Genetics, Microbiology and Statistics and the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona.

The smallest type of ocean microorganisms, viruses, apart from very abundant, are much more diverse than previously thought and are mediators and modulators of oceanic biogeochemical essential functions, as shown by researchers of the Institute de Ciències del Mar a Barcelona, ​​CSIC, in a study led by the Ohio State University (USA). The study is published today in the journal Nature.