Scientific news

The ICM and the Fishermen's Association of Palamos are working together in a study funded by the Diputació de Girona to assess the impact of different models of trawl doors on the seafloor.

Quick loss of sediments

A general principle of biology is that all cell membranes are built from phospholipids, i.e. lipids containing phosphorus. Until recently it was thought that these molecules were essential to the functioning of the cell. However, a few exceptions have been discovered in recent years: some higher plants and marine microalgae can substitute their phospholipids with non-phosphorus lipids when the availability of this essential nutrient is low.

A scientific study reveals that the aging process in marine copepods is linked to an increase in cellular oxidative damage. Moreover, overeating increases mortality rates and shortens the life of these components of the plankton. These are the main results that a team of scientists from the ICM, in collaboration with researchers from Greece, Brazil and Germany, has published in Scientific Reports, a multidisciplinary journal of the prestigious Nature group.

More than a hundred scientists and experts from Europe, USA and Australia met from 28th to 30th October in Barcelona to celebrate the third edition of the General Assembly of the European Association of Citizen Science (ECSA), and to discuss the most important challenges of this field for the coming years. The meeting was organized by the same ECSA, the OpenSystems research group at the Universitat de Barcelona, the Barcelona Lab of the Citizen Science Office of the Barcelona City Council and the ICM.

European hake populations in the western Mediterranean Sea are overexploited. This is the conclusion of all the assessments made since 1992 until now by CSIC scientists at the Institut de Ciencias del Mar (ICM) and from other research institutions, like IEO and IFREMER. Fishermen and administrations have joined to tackle fishery pressure.

New results of Malaspina project are published this month in three articles at the Journal of the International Society for Microbial Ecology. Led by scientists from the ICM, the studies confirm that among the thousands of studied microorganisms, about 50% correspond to new species. Two unexpected findings also reveal a high presence of fungi in the deep ocean and a great abundance of a symbiont organism recently discovered.

Studying the microbial diversity