Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research.

This is the final version. Available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record. Data and code availability: • Metadata have been deposited at Zenodo and are publicly available as of the date of publication. DOIs are listed in the key resources table. • All original code has been deposited at Zenodo and is publicly available as of the date of publication. DOIs are listed in the key resources table. • Any additional information required to reanalyse the data reported in this paper is available from the lead contact upon request.Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear understanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5,6,7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8,9,10,11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world's most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepresented in biodiversity databases.13,14,15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may eliminate pieces of the Amazon's biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological communities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple organism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region's vulnerability to environmental change. 15%-18% of the most neglected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lost.Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico (CNPq)Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico (CNPq)São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)University of Bristol (PolicyBristol)University of Bristol Climate and Net Zero Impact AwardsUniversity of Bristol Elizabeth Blackwell Institute Rapid Research FundingNatural Environment Research Council (NERC)European Union’s Horizon 202

Fig. 3 in Limited effects of dominant ants on assemblage species richness in three Amazon forests.

Fig. 3. The percentage of better-fit linear, asymptotic, and quadratic models applied to data from 1000 spatially-structured randomisations for each subsample, using baiting, pitfall trap, Winkler data, and for a subset of subordinate species that are more prone to interact with dominant ants. The subset of subordinate species used data from pitfall and Winkler sampling techniques combined. The subsamples were distributed along 225 m and spaced 25 m apart

The Amazonas-trap: a new method for sampling plant-inhabiting arthropod communities in tropical forest understory

Methods to quantify plant-insect interactions in tropical forests may miss many important arthropods and can be time consuming and uneven in capture efficiency. We describe the Amazonas-trap, a new method that rapidly envelops the target plant for sampling arthropods. We evaluated the efficiency of the Amazonas-trap by comparing it with two commonly used sampling methods to collect arthropods from plants: the beating tray and manual collection. Samples were collected in 10 permanent plots, in the Ducke forest reserve, Manaus (Amazonas, Brazil). In each plot we sampled 18 plant individuals of Protium sp. (Burseraceae): six by a beating tray, six by manual collection, and six using the Amazonas-trap. All insects were identified to the family level and those belonging to the order Hymenoptera were identified to the species and morphospecies level. The new method sampled more insect families and more Hymenoptera species than tree beating and manual collection. Of the 75 total families collected, 20 were sampled exclusively by the Amazonas-trap, seven were only collected with a beating tray, and seven were sampled exclusively with manual collecting. A similar pattern was found for abundance: Amazonas-trap sampled more individuals, followed by the beating tray and manual collection. Small and winged arthropods were more abundant in Amazonas-trap, explaining the highest richness of Hymenoptera and insect families sampled with this method. The new method sampled more spiders, wood-fungi feeders, sap suckers, omnivorous, parasitoids, and insect predators than the other methods, but was equally effective in sampling leaf-feeders and ants. Amazonas-trap was more time consuming in the field, but for all diversity parameters evaluated, the new method showed better performance for collecting invertebrates on plants. © 2019 The Netherlands Entomological Societ

Effects of forest fragmentation on community patterns of social wasps (Hymenoptera: Vespidae) in Central Amazon

Landscape fragmentation is one of the greatest threats to environments globally, affecting all living organisms within fragments at many assembly levels. Despite such general assumptions, very few reports exist on the diversity patterns of Amazonian social wasps (Polistinae) in response to fragmentation. Our study aims at addressing how the community patterns of social wasp change from continuous to fragmented landscapes in the Amazon rainforest. We collected social wasps for a year (11 520 trap-hour effort) in a continuous forest and a highly disturbed urban forest fragment, located in Manaus, Brazil. We attracted wasps using sardine and orange juice traps, placed in 20 sampling plots. We collected 2742 wasps from 29 species. Agelaia pallipes, Angiopolybia pallens and Agelaia fulvofasciata were the most abundant species. We detected significant differences in overall abundance, species richness and species composition of social wasps between landscapes. Conversely, no difference in species diversity (effective number of species) was found between habitats. Despite the low quantity of exclusive species, the numbers of most species declined sharply in the fragmented habitat, while for one species (Polybia rejecta), abundance increased. Regarding the percentile of species contribution to dissimilarity between landscapes, five out of the first six species were highly abundant (>100 individuals), thus demonstrating that the observed pattern was very likely driven by common species. Additionally, our findings highlight that fragmentation threatens abundant species as much as rare species. We hope that our results encourage the use of social wasps as models in basic and applied ecological surveys and further efforts for conservation of pristine forest areas in the tropical region of South America. © 2018 Australian Entomological Societ