It is getting increasingly clear that biodiversity underpins human well-being and livelihoods, being vital to the achievement of most United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Biodiversity contributes significantly to climate change adaptation, mitigation, and disaster risk reduction. At the same time, climate change is a major and growing driver of biodiversity loss, imposing high costs on the biosphere. But although impacts are global in scope, they are not uniform in their magnitude – nor are the abilities of countries and communities to cope with changes. Projections show that the combined effects of climate change and habitat loss will have critical local impacts in the Neotropical region with the potential to set off major earth systems feedback on global scales. Such impacts are expected to become more intense and in need to be addressed by the society. Understanding how species can survive and adapt under changing environments has become a central question to anticipate and prepare the society for the impacts of climate change. Yet, because biodiversity and ecosystem dynamics are inherently complex, models are often used to assess and predict the impacts of drivers on biodiversity and human well-being. Models have been powerful tools used in the last decades to forecast changes in the distribution of species while they move to favorable sites. They have been traditionally used by experts and policymakers to prioritize and allocate resources to specific geographical areas and species that appear more prone to extinction. However, models only address a few meaningful theoretical dimensions and are increasingly being criticized for not including the ability of species to adapt. With the advance of new high-throughput methods, researchers are discovering that the genetic variation found across wild populations might help species cope with changes. But gene flow will also be affected by those changes, which will increase the likelihood of interspecific hybridization. Reproductive interactions between formerly isolated species are inevitable as populations shift geographically and temporally because of climate change, potentially resulting in introgression, speciation, and even extinction of species, as we know it. However, interspecific gene flow could also be a crucial mechanism for rapid survival in changing climates, since it has historically led to novel adaptive traits that allowed the colonization of extreme, novel habitats where their ancestral parental species could not live. In this context, the project HyAdapt explores the potential of interspecific gene flow to promote rapid adaptation in changing Neotropical climates. Here, we use an integrative approach —combining environmental, phenotypic, and genomic data — to identify traits brought by hybridization that are potentially involved in local adaptation. Given the exploratory nature of this call and the short timeline, we will test this question using neotropical orchids as a model group. Orchids have an important economical role for many families leaving in Neotropical countries but are very sensitive to changes and highly permeable to gene flow, which makes them an ideal group to test adaptations. To achieve the main goal, phenotypic traits and genome-wide polymorphisms will be studied in parental species and hybrid individuals occurring in favorable and extreme climatic sites to identify genomic regions revealing signatures of local adaptation to different environmental factors. We will then implement an innovative association method to project gene-environment relationships across space to predict areas at risk of climate maladaptation vs. areas where hybridization has potentially forecast the resilience capacity of species to changes. The project is based on an innovative scientific approach, integrating environmental and genomic tools coupled with new tools for data mining to diminish the burden of the massive genomic data. HyAdapt brings an enthusiastic international research team made up of a mix of senior and junior researchers that will jointly train young students in a new exciting cutting-edge research field. However, to be successful, we need to move beyond lab studies and translate innovation to the society to better halt the loss of biodiversity and develop strategies culturally linked with the habits of local communities. Thus, the production of scientific genomic knowledge gathered through HyAdapt will be completed with the strengthening of local capacities and the dissemination of research in efficient open-source information systems. This training local-based approach will prepare the next generation of change agents and innovators for sustainable development in the developing world. A biodiversidade é fundamental para a funcionalidade dos ecossistemas e do bem-estar humano, sendo um pilar básico no desenvolvimento da maioria dos Objetivos de Desenvolvimento Sustentável das Nações Unidas. A biodiversidade contribui significativamente para a adaptação e mitigação das mudanças climáticas, e a redução do risco de desastres. Mas as mudanças climáticas são impulsionadoras da perda acelerada da biodiversidade, com altos impactos impostos à biosfera. Embora esses impactos sejam globais, não são uniformes, nem na magnitude, nem na capacidade de mitigação dos países e das comunidades locais. De facto, prevê-se que o efeito combinado das mudanças climáticas e da perda de habitats atingirão fortemente a região Neotropical, com um grande potencial de impacto à escala global pela retroalimentação dos principais sistemas terrestres. Espera-se que tais impactos se tornem mais intensos e, portanto, necessários de serem mitigados pela sociedade. Compreender como as espécies podem sobreviver e adaptar-se a ambientes em mudança tornou-se uma questão central para antecipar e preparar a sociedade para os impactos das mudanças climáticas. No entanto, como a biodiversidade e a dinâmica dos ecossistemas são inerentemente complexos, são frequentemente usados modelos, para avaliar e prever os impactos. Nas últimas décadas, os modelos têm sido ferramentas poderosas usadas para prever mudanças na distribuição de espécies, enquanto se deslocam para locais favoráveis. Têm sido, por isso, tradicionalmente usados por especialistas, pela sociedade civil e por decisores políticos para priorizar e alocar recursos para áreas geográficas específicas e para espécies mais propensas à extinção. No entanto, os modelos abordam apenas algumas dimensões teóricas e são cada vez mais criticados dado que não consideram a capacidade de adaptação das espécies. Como consequência do avanço de novas tecnologias, demonstrou-se que a diversidade genética influência fortemente a biodiversidade. As variações genómicas populacionais têm um papel fundamental no fenótipo e no potencial adaptativo das espécies em ambientes em mudança. Mas o fluxo genético também será afetado por essas mudanças, o que aumentará a probabilidade de hibridação interespecífica. Serão inevitáveis alterações nas interações reprodutivas entre espécies anteriormente isoladas, ??à medida que as populações mudam geograficamente e temporalmente por causa das mudanças climáticas. Tal resultará em introgressão, especiação e até na extinção de espécies como conhecidas atualmente. No entanto, a hibridação também pode ser um mecanismo crucial para a rápida sobrevivência face a mudanças. Historicamente, a hibridação originou novas características adaptativas que permitiram a colonização de novos habitats, onde as espécies ancestrais não poderiam sobreviver. Neste contexto, o projeto HyAdapt explora o potencial do fluxo genético interespecífico como um mecanismo de rápida adaptação às alterações climáticas em ambientes Neotropicais. Será utilizada uma abordagem integrada – combinando dados ambientais, fenotípicos e genómicos – para identificar as características promovidas pela hibridização, potencialmente envolvidas na adaptação local, utilizando as orquídeas neotropicais como grupo modelo. As orquídeas têm um papel económico importante para muitas famílias nos países Neotropicais, mas são muito sensíveis às mudanças e altamente permeáveis ao fluxo genético, o que as torna um grupo ideal para testar adaptações. Assim, as características fenotípicas e os polimorfismos genómicos serão estudados em espécies parentais e indivíduos híbridos, em áreas climáticas favoráveis e extremas, para identificar regiões genómicas com assinatura de adaptação local. Finalmente, implementaremos um método de associação inovador para projetar geograficamente relações gene-ambiente, prevendo áreas em risco de má adaptação climática versus áreas onde a hibridização tenha potencialmente aumentado a capacidade de resiliência da espécie às mudanças climáticas. Será usada uma abordagem científica inovadora, integrando ferramentas ambientais e genómicas, juntamente com novas ferramentas de mineração de dados para diminuir a carga dos dados genómicos massivos. HyAdapt reúne uma equipa internacional composta por uma mistura de investigadores seniores e juniores que prepararão em conjunto, jovens estudantes num novo e excitante campo de investigação. No entanto, para ter sucesso, precisamos ir além dos estudos de laboratório e traduzir a inovação para a sociedade, para melhor preservar a biodiversidade e desenvolver estratégias culturalmente ligadas aos hábitos das comunidades locais. Assim, a produção de conhecimento científico obtido por meio do HyAdapt será complementada com o fortalecimento das capacidades locais e a disseminação dos resultados. Esta abordagem de treino local irá preparar a próxima geração de agentes de mudança, para o desenvolvimento sustentável.

ALPRODE is aimed at promoting sustainable economic growth in Ecuador and Colombia through academic training and the improvement of employability in the field of sustainable productive development and international cooperation, within the framework of multi-stakeholder partnership schemes. The main axes of the Project are: 1.To develop an innovative training offer on sustainable development, climate change and international cooperation, consisting of courses focused on green, blue and orange economies, on responding to climate change with entrepreneurship and social responsibility actions, and on favouring international cooperation, for which there is a growing demand in Colombia and Ecuador.2.Create an Internship Programme linked to the educational offer, composed of actions that will effectively link the participating universities in Colombia and Ecuador and their students with the private, public and social sectors. This will increase the degree of employability of the students of the new courses offered. 3.Development of multi-stakeholder partnerships for sustainable development and international cooperation, involving the business world, the public and social sectors of Colombia, Ecuador, Spain, Portugal and the EU. This will improve the internationalisation and innovation processes of the participating universities and chambers of commerce.4.Creation of a virtual platform that will include the Virtual Forum for Employment (Marketplace) and the Birregional Alumni Network on sustainable development and international cooperation, which will favour the internationalisation of universities and students from Colombia and Ecuador, as well as the use of new technologies.The Consortium is made up of 11 partners from Spain, Portugal, Colombia and Ecuador, with diverse and complementary profiles, including universities, chambers of commerce and one NGO.

The participation of Women in STEM in the Latin-America region is a very complex problem in which necessarily call for actions from different actors, such as governments, private sector, families, as well the different levels of education (since childhood to higher education). In order to make concrete contribution, Higher Education Institutions need to focus on those needs and situations in which it has certain influence for making real progress, such as:- Significant minority of Women choose and access to STEM programs at tertiary level. The lowest rates appears in science and engineering programs. - Data is scarce, showing a need for analytical and systematic methods, which reflect actual participation of women in STEM at HEIs. - Tertiary studies with a high math component such as STEM seem to be excluded from the studies options by girls in secondary schools. - Lack of bridges between public policy and institutional actions led by HEIs. In this way, and aligned to the Erasmus + Capacity Building priority for improving management and operation of higher education, in terms of access to and democratization of Higher Education, the W‐STEM Project aims at Improving strategies and mechanisms of attraction, access and guidance of Women in Latin-American STEM Higher Education programs. For achieving this main objective, W-STEM project, will • Measure the gender equality in enrolment and retention rates in STEM programs.• Implement Universities’ policies, strategies and organizational mechanisms for improving attraction, access and guidance at undergraduate levels in STEM programs. • Promote STEM studies vocation and choice in girls and young women in secondary schools as well as guidance in the first year of the STEM program. • Develop an online training package for Higher Education Institutions to implement effective strategies to enhance attraction, access and guidance of Women in STEM programs.