Night and crepuscular mosquitoes and risk of vector-borne diseases in areas of piassaba extraction in the middle Negro River basin, state of Amazonas, Brazil

A study of crepuscular and night-biting mosquitoes was conducted at remote settlements along the Padauiri River, middle Negro River, state of Amazonas, Brazil. Collections were performed with human bait and a CDC-light trap on three consecutive days per month from June 2003-May 2004. In total, 1,203 h of collection were performed, of which 384 were outside and 819 were inside houses. At total of 11,612 specimens were captured, and Anophelinae (6.01%) were much less frequent than Culicinae (93.94%). Anopheles darlingi was the most frequent Anophelinae collected. Among the culicines, 2,666 Culex (Ae.) clastrieri Casal & Garcia, 2,394 Culex. (Mel.) vomerifer Komp, and 1,252 Culex (Mel.) eastor Dyar were the most frequent species collected. The diversity of insects found reveals the receptivity of the area towards a variety of diseases facilitated by the presence of vectors involved in the transmission of Plasmodium, arboviruses and other infectious agents

Community-Based Management of Amazonian Biodiversity Assets

The Amazon is the largest forest system on Earth, supporting a variety of indigenous societies, small farmers, extractivists, and artisanal fishers with different cultures and relations with wildlife. However, the Brazilian Amazon has lost more than 436, 000 km2 of forest in the last 30 years, and Protected Areas may not be enough to ensure the conservation of biodiversity and cultural heritage. On the other hand, formal alliances with rural inhabitants can decentralize resource management, strengthen full-time surveillance systems, reduce overall costs, and boost conservation effectiveness. Here, we provide an assessment of the two largest community-based management (CBM) programs in the Brazilian Amazon, which are inducing strong social and ecological benefits at a large scale. First, we show the benefits from CBM of giant arapaima, which has promoted an impressive stock recovery of the world’s largest freshwater scaled fish (Arapaima spp.), generating income and other benefits for rural livelihoods in Amazonian floodplains. Second, we show that CBM of freshwater turtles (Podocnemis spp.) has also promoted the population recovery of overexploited turtles, contributing to the maintenance of important cultural values. We also identified a set of social and institutional principles, and the intrinsic values of natural resources, which can help develop successful CBM programs. Finally, we discuss how these principles can strengthen existing initiatives and/or inspire new ones. Reconciling biodiversity conservation and local aspirations for rural development is an urgent socioecological demand in Amazonia. Raising the profile of successful initiatives can be a powerful strategy to disseminate a message of hope and action to local and international agencies that can support the scaling up of these successful models

Genetic Diversity of New World Crocodilians

Genetic diversity is one of the most important attributes of any population; it is defined as the variation in the amount of genetic information within and among individuals of a population, species, assemblage, or community. It can be expressed as differences between individuals at different levels, such as morphological features, structure and chromosomal number, and polymorphisms of sequences of DNA or proteins. An assessment of genetic diversity is fundamental to population genetic studies and has extremely important applications in conservation biology and the development of management and sustainable use plans. This chapter discusses the main indices that allow analyzing genetic variability and population structure of New World crocodilian populations, the methodologies used to estimate these indices, and the principal population genetic data available for these species. The effective population size concept is also discussed, a fundamental parameter in the study of principally those crocodile populations that have been drastically reduced in size and/or suffered fragmentation of their environments.Fil: Amavet, Patricia Susana. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias. Departamento de Ciencias Naturales; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe; ArgentinaFil: Barban Zucoloto, Rodrigo. Universidade Federal da Bahia; BrasilFil: Hrbek, Tomas. Universidad Federal del Amazonas.; BrasilFil: Pires Farias, Izeni. Universidad Federal del Amazonas.; Brasi