On Thursday, November 16 at 11:00 a.m., Rula Domínguez, research technician in the Coastal Ecology group at the University of Vigo, will present the MARISCO project, as well as the preliminary results of her doctoral thesis, in a new conference of the Café con Sal program, with the talk entitled “Shellfish beds in Galicia: prevention of risks caused by extreme events on commercially important bivalves“.
The predicted effects of climate change for the coming years on our coast indicate an increase in the duration and frequency of heat waves and also an increase in the intensity, frequency and duration of torrential rains. These two phenomena have a great impact on the ecosystem of the estuaries, and particularly on the organisms that live in the intertidal zone and that, with very reduced mobility, cannot escape the abundant freshwater runoff or the intense heat during periods of low tide. These effects on the ecosystems are even more worrying when it comes to resources of high economic importance, such as bivalves in the Galician estuaries. In this context, the MARISCO project emerged, with the aim of studying these effects and creating a prediction tool that helps in the management of shellfish resources.
Rula Domínguez, directed by Elsa Vázquez and Celia Olabarria, researchers from the Coastal Ecology group of the Marine Research Center of the University of Vigo, is developing her doctoral thesis within the MARISCO project, with the aim of explaining how the environmental changes expected with climate change affect the main species of shellfish banks, but not only at the mortality level, but also at a sublethal level (growth, reproduction, scope-for-growth or growth potential, respiration) in order to include this information in predictive models for use in the direct management of fisheries.
During the conference, the speaker will make a general presentation of the MARISCO project and her thesis, presenting the preliminary results of some of the experiments carried out so far, in which they studied the eco-physiological responses in three species of clams and the cockle to the variations in salinity and temperature that occur in shellfish beds.
The MARISCO project has a grant from MINECO, CTM2014-51935-R, such as the pre-doctoral grant of Rula Domínguez (CTM2015-51935-R), and the Xunta de Galicia-FEDER (GRC2013-004). The researchers Sarah Woodin and David Wethey, funded by NASA (NNX11AP77G) and the US National Science Foundation (OCE1129401), also participate in this project.
The conference will take place in the auditorium of the Faculty of Marine Sciences of the University of Vigo at 11:00 am and will be broadcast live at http://tv.uvigo.es/es/directo/1.html and will later be available on our websites and social networks.
https://tv.campusdomar.es/
https://tv.uvigo.es/
https://ecimat.uvigo.es/gl/ciclo-conferencias-cafe-con-sal.html
Rula Domínguez’s presentation poster
