A journey through the lives of local galaxies as revealed by their ionized gas

Studying the ionization sources, dynamics of the ionized gas and the interplay between it and other phases of the ISM and the stellar populations in local galaxies is essential to understand their formation and evolution. Integral field spectroscpy (IFS) is a tool that lets us study ionized gas in local galaxies with unprecedented detail. I would like to share several projects that I am involved with that make use of IFS to study different aspects of the ionized gas: the relation between nitrogen abundance (N/O) and the stellar population content of star-forming galaxies from the CALIFA survey; the locality of the effect of close interactions in the star formation of CALIFA galaxies; the presence and significance of ionized gas in early-type galaxies from MUSE data; the interplay between AGN outflows and winds and the ISM of disk galaxies from CALIFA and MUSE data, and the effect of direct, face-on collissions in the star formation and dynamics of a sample of ring galaxies from Calar Alto / CALIFA and MUSE data. All these projects contribute to the understanding of the sources and dynamics of ionized gas and its role on the evolution of galaxies in the local universe.