A influência do contexto comportamental na estrutura social de botos-da-tainha (Tursiops truncatus) que interagem com pescadores artesanais

TCC(graduação) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Centro de Ciências Biológicas. Biologia.Indivíduos tendem a formar grupos com indivíduos similares. Esta ‘assortatividade’ tem sido descrita para muitos táxons, mas a identificação de assortatividade ativa por padrões comportamentais ainda é um desafio. Em Laguna, sul do Brasil, a estrutura social de botos-da-tainha (Tursiops truncatus) parece estar associada a uma tática de forrageio envolvendo pescadores artesanais a qual é particular desta população. No entanto, comportamento social pode variar entre contextos comportamentais. Aqui, nosso objetivo foi determinar se a assortatividade dos botos em torno das táticas de forrageio (forrageando em cooperação ou não com pescadores) se mantém em outros contextos comportamentais, como socialização e deslocamento. Utilizando o formalismo de redes complexas, calculamos índices de assortatividade e avaliamos se variam em cada contexto comportamental. Nossos resultados confirmam que indivíduos que usam a mesma tática de forrageio tendem a se associar mais uns com os outros do com aqueles que usam uma tática diferente. Em última análise, a estrutura social é mantida em diferentes contextos comportamentais, mesmo quando os indivíduos não interagem com pescadores. Isso demonstra como um comportamento especializado pode estruturar uma população, influenciando quem interage socialmente com quem. Nossos achados podem contribuir para o debate sobre o papel das variações comportamentais em sociedades animais

Safeguarding human–wildlife cooperation

Human–wildlife cooperation occurs when humans and free-living wild animals actively coordinate their behavior to achieve a mutually beneficial outcome. These interactions provide important benefits to both the human and wildlife communities involved, have wider impacts on the local ecosystem, and represent a unique intersection of human and animal cultures. The remaining active forms are human–honeyguide and human–dolphin cooperation, but these are at risk of joining several inactive forms (including human–wolf and human–orca cooperation). Human–wildlife cooperation faces a unique set of conservation challenges, as it requires multiple components—a motivated human and wildlife partner, a suitable environment, and compatible interspecies knowledge—which face threats from ecological and cultural changes. To safeguard human–wildlife cooperation, we recommend: (i) establishing ethically sound conservation strategies together with the participating human communities; (ii) conserving opportunities for human and wildlife participation; (iii) protecting suitable environments; (iv) facilitating cultural transmission of traditional knowledge; (v) accessibly archiving Indigenous and scientific knowledge; and (vi) conducting long-term empirical studies to better understand these interactions and identify threats. Tailored safeguarding plans are therefore necessary to protect these diverse and irreplaceable interactions. Broadly, our review highlights that efforts to conserve biological and cultural diversity should carefully consider interactions between human and animal cultures

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding 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,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 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 underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities 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 or ganism 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 ne glected 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 lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

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

Heterogeneous contributions of change in population distribution of body mass index to change in obesity and underweight NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC)

From 1985 to 2016, the prevalence of underweight decreased, and that of obesity and severe obesity increased, in most regions, with significant variation in the magnitude of these changes across regions. We investigated how much change in mean body mass index (BMI) explains changes in the prevalence of underweight, obesity, and severe obesity in different regions using data from 2896 population-based studies with 187 million participants. Changes in the prevalence of underweight and total obesity, and to a lesser extent severe obesity, are largely driven by shifts in the distribution of BMI, with smaller contributions from changes in the shape of the distribution. In East and Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the underweight tail of the BMI distribution was left behind as the distribution shifted. There is a need for policies that address all forms of malnutrition by making healthy foods accessible and affordable, while restricting unhealthy foods through fiscal and regulatory restrictions

Variação no comportamento e performance de pescadores artesanais que interagem com botos

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Ciências Biológicas, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia, Florianópolis, 2021.A pesca artesanal de pequena escala é uma atividade incerta e desafiadora. Além de eventuais flutuações na disponibilidade do recurso pesqueiro, a dinâmica da pesca artesanal também é influenciada pelas habilidades intrínsecas de forrageio e tomada de decisão dos pescadores. Os pescadores normalmente variam em seus objetivos, experiências e táticas, muitas vezes buscando aperfeiçoar sua performance de pesca. No entanto, pouco se sabe sobre a influência da variação comportamental no sucesso de captura de pescadores artesanais. Em Laguna, sul do Brasil, uma comunidade de pescadores artesanais interage com uma população de botos-da-tainha (Tursiops truncatus cf. gephyreus). Enquanto botos conduzem cardumes de presas (principalmente Mugil liza, a tainha) até uma linha de pescadores posicionada paralela à margem, estes aguardam um evento comportamental específico dos botos, que interpretam como ?sinal? para lançar suas tarrafas. Esta interação, tanto para botos como para pescadores, requer sincronismo e nuances comportamentais, e é um bom estudo de caso para avaliar performance e habilidades que possam maximizar o sucesso de captura. Além disso, este sistema contém pescadores amadores e profissionais, os quais têm diferentes percepções do sistema boto-pescador como resultado de suas experiências e ambientes sociais. Isso gera uma variação na percepção de reputação que os pescadores têm dos outros membros da comunidade pesqueira. Considerando tais diferenças comportamentais (e.g., como e onde lançam suas tarrafas) que podem afetar o sucesso na pesca com os botos e as diferentes percepções e relações sociais, minha dissertação tem dois objetivos principais. No primeiro capítulo, investigo como diferenças comportamentais e condições ambientais locais podem influenciar o sucesso de captura dos pescadores artesanais que interagem com botos. Ao combinar uma amostragem ambiental in situ com uma amostragem comportamental em escala fina por vídeos aéreos, demonstro maior capturabilidade de peixes entre os pescadores que estão mais bem posicionados na água e lançam suas tarrafas mais abertas e mais perto dos botos. Também descobri que as diferenças nas habilidades de lançamento de tarrafas afetam o sucesso dos pescadores artesanais sobre as condições ambientais relacionadas à disponibilidade de peixes. Isto sugere que estas variações de performance que maximizam o sucesso de captura não são respostas imediatas a variações na disponibilidade de recursos, mas sim resultante da experiência e conhecimento sobre o sistema, adquiridos pelos pescadores. Dessa forma, manter este conhecimento e habilidades adquiridas pode ser essencial para garantir os benefícios aos pescadores que interagem com botos. No segundo capítulo, investigo a relação entre a posição dos pescadores em sua rede social (centralidade) e a reputação dentro da comunidade pesqueira local. Busquei também avaliar a existência de preferências sociais em torno dessa reputação dos pescadores, isto é, se há uma preferência dos pescadores se associarem com outros pescadores de alta reputação. Além disso, avalio se essas relações sociais se mantêm quando os pescadores estão forrageando ou quando não estão forrageando, ou seja, em contextos comportamentais distintos. Para isso, registrei a localização dos pescadores por meio de pulseiras com GPS e acessei os índices de reputação dos pescadores artesanais, como por eles percebidos em entrevistas semiestruturadas de projetos paralelos. Em seguida, usei os dados de GPS para estabelecer grupos espaço-temporais de indivíduos nos diferentes contextos comportamentais e, finalmente, quantifiquei e testei se a centralidade se relaciona com a reputação e calculei os coeficientes de assortatividade em torno da reputação. Encontrei uma tendência de indivíduos de alta reputação serem mais socialmente centrais, especialmente no contexto de não forrageio, isto é, local onde os pescadores esperam os botos na praia e descansam, um ambiente socialmente mais favorável. Além disso, encontrei que os pescadores não tendem a se relacionar com pescadores de reputação similar em ambos os contextos (?forrageio? e ?não-forrageio). Durante o forrageio, essa descoberta reforça a robustez das regras informais do sistema boto-pescador, as quais permitem que qualquer pescador possa usar qualquer um dos pontos de pesca (vagas), e pode sugerir que pescadores com baixa reputação tentam se aproximar dos pescadores de alta reputação, os quais são percebidos como os pescadores que têm maior sucesso de captura e que têm um entendimento melhor do sistema. No contexto de ?não-forrageio?, onde interações sociais são mais pronunciadas, novamente os pescadores não tendem a se relacionar com similares em relação a reputação, o que sugere que as preferencias sociais de um pescador são independentes da reputação dos outros. Esses resultados também podem sugerir que pescadores com baixa reputação estão tentando criar relações com pescadores de alta reputação, a fim de adquirir conhecimento (por meio de troca de informação) e possíveis parcerias para cooperar na pesca com os botos. Concluo e reforço a importância da variação comportamental de pescadores em pescas artesanais de pequena escala, que pode, por exemplo, contribuir para uma melhor avaliação do uso do recurso pesqueiros. Além disso, é importante saber como os pescadores variam seu comportamento frente a flutuações ambientais e a disponibilidade de presas. Em pescas artesanais, essa variação não deve ser ignorada em estratégias de manejo pois, como demonstrado nesse estudo, variações comportamentais são relevantes para o sucesso dos pescadores, assim ajudando na persistência de pescas tradicionais centenárias.Abstract: Small-scale artisanal fishing is an uncertain and challenging activity. In addition to fluctuations in the availability of fishing resources, the dynamics of artisanal fishing is also influenced by the intrinsic foraging skills and decision-making processes of fishers. Fishers typically vary in their goals, experiences and tactics, often seeking to improve their fishing performance. However, little is known about the influence of behavioural variation on the catch success of artisanal fishers. In Laguna, southern Brazil, a community of artisanal fishers interacts with a population of Lahille?s bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus cf. gephyreus). The dolphins lead fish schools (mainly Mugil liza, the mullet) to a line of fishers positioned parallel to the shore, the fishers await a specific behavioural event from the dolphins, which they interpret as a 'signal' to cast their cast nets. This interaction, for both dolphins and fishers, requires timing and behavioural nuances, and is a good study case for evaluating performance and skills that can maximize catching success. In addition, this system contains both amateur and professional fishers, who have different perceptions of the dolphin-fisher system as a result of their experiences and social environments. This creates a variation in the perception of peer reputation that fishers have with other members of the fishing community. Considering such behavioural differences (e.g., how and where they cast their nets) that can affect the success of fishing with the dolphins and the different perceptions and social relationships, my dissertation has two main objectives. In the first chapter, I investigate how behavioural differences and local environmental conditions can influence the catching success of artisanal fishers that interact with dolphins. By combining in situ environmental sampling with fine-scale behavioural sampling by aerial videos, I demonstrate greater fish catchability among fishers who are well positioned in the water and cast their nets wide open and closer to the dolphins. I have also found that differences in casting skills affect artisanal fishers' success over and above environmental conditions related to fish availability. This suggests that these performance variations that maximize capture success are not immediate responses to variations in resource availability, but rather result from experience and knowledge about the system acquired by fishers. Thus, maintaining this knowledge and acquired skills can be essential to ensure benefits to fishers who interact with dolphins. In the second chapter, I investigate the relationship between the position of the fisher in their social network (centrality) and reputation within the local fishing community. I also sought to assess the existence of social preferences around this the fisher reputation, that is, if there is a preference for fishers to associate with other highly reputable fishers. Furthermore, I assess whether these social relationships are maintained when fishers are foraging or when they are not foraging, that is, in different behavioral contexts. For this, I recorded the fishers' location using GPS wristbands and accessed the artisanal fishers' reputation indexes, as perceived by themselves in semi-structured interviews of parallel projects. Next, I use the GPS data to establish spatiotemporal groups in our different behavioural contexts, and finally I quantified and tested whether centrality is related to reputation and calculated the assortativity coefficients around reputation. I found a tendency of high reputation fishers to be more socially central, especially in the non-foraging context, that is, where fishers wait for the dolphins on the beach and rest, a more socially favorable environment. Furthermore, I found that fishers do not tend to associate to fishers of similar reputation in both contexts ('foraging' and 'non-foraging'). During foraging, this finding reinforces the robustness of the informal rules of the dolphin-fisher system, which allow any fisher to use any of the fishing spots and may suggest that low-reputed fishers try to approach high-reputation fishers, who they perceive as the fishers who have the greatest fishing success and who have a better understanding of the system. In the 'non-foraging' context, where social interactions are more pronounced, again fishers do not tend to relate to similar in terms of reputation, suggesting that a fishers' social preferences are independent of the reputation of others. These results may also suggest that fishers with low reputations are trying to build relationships with fishers of high reputation in order to gain knowledge (through information exchange) and possible partnerships to cooperate in fishing with the dolphins. I conclude and reinforce the importance of behavioural variation of fishers in small-scale artisanal fisheries, which can, for example, contribute to a better assessment of fish stocks. Furthermore, it is important to know how fishers vary their behaviour in the face of environmental fluctuations and prey availability. In artisanal fisheries, this variation should not be ignored in management strategies because, as shown in this study, behavioral variations are relevant to the fishers' success, thus helping the persistence of centuries-old traditional fisheries

Ambulatory and hospitalized patients with suspected and confirmed mpox: an observational cohort study from BrazilResearch in context

Summary: Background: By October 30, 2022, 76,871 cases of mpox were reported worldwide, with 20,614 cases in Latin America. This study reports characteristics of a case series of suspected and confirmed mpox cases at a referral infectious diseases center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Methods: This was a single-center, prospective, observational cohort study that enrolled all patients with suspected mpox between June 12 and August 19, 2022. Mpox was confirmed by a PCR test. We compared characteristics of confirmed and non-confirmed cases, and among confirmed cases according to HIV status using distribution tests. Kernel estimation was used for exploratory spatial analysis. Findings: Of 342 individuals with suspected mpox, 208 (60.8%) were confirmed cases. Compared to non-confirmed cases, confirmed cases were more frequent among individuals aged 30–39 years, cisgender men (96.2% vs. 66.4%; p < 0.0001), reporting recent sexual intercourse (95.0% vs. 69.4%; p < 0.0001) and using PrEP (31.6% vs. 10.1%; p < 0.0001). HIV (53.2% vs. 20.2%; p < 0.0001), HCV (9.8% vs. 1.1%; p = 0.0046), syphilis (21.2% vs. 16.3%; p = 0.43) and other STIs (33.0% vs. 21.6%; p = 0.042) were more frequent among confirmed mpox cases. Confirmed cases presented more genital (77.3% vs. 39.8%; p < 0.0001) and anal lesions (33.1% vs. 11.5%; p < 0.0001), proctitis (37.1% vs. 13.3%; p < 0.0001) and systemic signs and symptoms (83.2% vs. 64.5%; p = 0.0003) than non-confirmed cases. Compared to confirmed mpox HIV-negative, HIV-positive individuals were older, had more HCV coinfection (15.2% vs. 3.7%; p = 0.011), anal lesions (45.7% vs. 20.5%; p < 0.001) and clinical features of proctitis (45.2% vs. 29.3%; p = 0.058). Interpretation: Mpox transmission in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, rapidly evolved into a local epidemic, with sexual contact playing a crucial role in its dynamics and high rates of coinfections with other STI. Preventive measures must address stigma and social vulnerabilities. Funding: Instituto Nacional de Infectologia Evandro Chagas, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (INI-Fiocruz)

AMAZONIA CAMTRAP: A data set of mammal, bird, and reptile species recorded with camera traps in the Amazon forest

The Amazon forest has the highest biodiversity on Earth. However, information on Amazonian vertebrate diversity is still deficient and scattered across the published, peer-reviewed, and gray literature and in unpublished raw data. Camera traps are an effective non-invasive method of surveying vertebrates, applicable to different scales of time and space. In this study, we organized and standardized camera trap records from different Amazon regions to compile the most extensive data set of inventories of mammal, bird, and reptile species ever assembled for the area. The complete data set comprises 154,123 records of 317 species (185 birds, 119 mammals, and 13 reptiles) gathered from surveys from the Amazonian portion of eight countries (Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela). The most frequently recorded species per taxa were: mammals: Cuniculus paca (11,907 records); birds: Pauxi tuberosa (3713 records); and reptiles: Tupinambis teguixin (716 records). The information detailed in this data paper opens up opportunities for new ecological studies at different spatial and temporal scales, allowing for a more accurate evaluation of the effects of habitat loss, fragmentation, climate change, and other human-mediated defaunation processes in one of the most important and threatened tropical environments in the world. The data set is not copyright restricted; please cite this data paper when using its data in publications and we also request that researchers and educators inform us of how they are using these data

NEOTROPICAL ALIEN MAMMALS: a data set of occurrence and abundance of alien mammals in the Neotropics

Biological invasion is one of the main threats to native biodiversity. For a species to become invasive, it must be voluntarily or involuntarily introduced by humans into a nonnative habitat. Mammals were among first taxa to be introduced worldwide for game, meat, and labor, yet the number of species introduced in the Neotropics remains unknown. In this data set, we make available occurrence and abundance data on mammal species that (1) transposed a geographical barrier and (2) were voluntarily or involuntarily introduced by humans into the Neotropics. Our data set is composed of 73,738 historical and current georeferenced records on alien mammal species of which around 96% correspond to occurrence data on 77 species belonging to eight orders and 26 families. Data cover 26 continental countries in the Neotropics, ranging from Mexico and its frontier regions (southern Florida and coastal-central Florida in the southeast United States) to Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, and Uruguay, and the 13 countries of Caribbean islands. Our data set also includes neotropical species (e.g., Callithrix sp., Myocastor coypus, Nasua nasua) considered alien in particular areas of Neotropics. The most numerous species in terms of records are from Bos sp. (n = 37,782), Sus scrofa (n = 6,730), and Canis familiaris (n = 10,084); 17 species were represented by only one record (e.g., Syncerus caffer, Cervus timorensis, Cervus unicolor, Canis latrans). Primates have the highest number of species in the data set (n = 20 species), partly because of uncertainties regarding taxonomic identification of the genera Callithrix, which includes the species Callithrix aurita, Callithrix flaviceps, Callithrix geoffroyi, Callithrix jacchus, Callithrix kuhlii, Callithrix penicillata, and their hybrids. This unique data set will be a valuable source of information on invasion risk assessments, biodiversity redistribution and conservation-related research. There are no copyright restrictions. Please cite this data paper when using the data in publications. We also request that researchers and teachers inform us on how they are using the data