Filling gaps on the endangered Cerrado Rocket Frog Allobates goianus (Bokermann, 1975) (Anura: Aromobatidae): new distributional record and comments on its daily activity

New data that seeks to fill knowledge gaps about distribution and natural history may improve our knowledge of the status of threatened species. Herein, new distributional record of the endangered species Allobates goianus is reported and information on daily activities of a population are provided using an automatic acoustic monitoring recorder. Despite the new distributional record, A. goianus has not been recorded in locations where it was previously found, we then discuss the possible causes of decline and how future efforts may help to better understand the species status.Asociación Herpetológica Argentin

Filling gaps on the endangered Cerrado Rocket Frog Allobates goianus (Bokermann, 1975) (Anura: Aromobatidae): new distributional record and comments on its daily activity

New data that seeks to fill knowledge gaps about distribution and natural history may improve our knowledge of the status of threatened species. Herein, new distributional record of the endangered species Allobates goianus is reported and information on daily activities of a population are provided using an automatic acoustic monitoring recorder. Despite the new distributional record, A. goianus has not been recorded in locations where it was previously found, we then discuss the possible causes of decline and how future efforts may help to better understand the species status.Asociación Herpetológica Argentin

Filling gaps on the endangered Cerrado Rocket Frog Allobates goianus (Bokermann, 1975) (Anura: Aromobatidae): new distributional record and comments on its daily activity

New data that seeks to fill knowledge gaps about distribution and natural history may improve our knowledge of the status of threatened species. Herein, new distributional record of the endangered species Allobates goianus is reported and information on daily activities of a population are provided using an automatic acoustic monitoring recorder. Despite the new distributional record, A. goianus has not been recorded in locations where it was previously found, we then discuss the possible causes of decline and how future efforts may help to better understand the species status.Asociación Herpetológica Argentin

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

Consistent patterns of common species across tropical tree communities

Trees structure the Earth’s most biodiverse ecosystem, tropical forests. The vast number of tree species presents a formidable challenge to understanding these forests, including their response to environmental change, as very little is known about most tropical tree species. A focus on the common species may circumvent this challenge. Here we investigate abundance patterns of common tree species using inventory data on 1,003,805 trees with trunk diameters of at least 10 cm across 1,568 locations1,2,3,4,5,6 in closed-canopy, structurally intact old-growth tropical forests in Africa, Amazonia and Southeast Asia. We estimate that 2.2%, 2.2% and 2.3% of species comprise 50% of the tropical trees in these regions, respectively. Extrapolating across all closed-canopy tropical forests, we estimate that just 1,053 species comprise half of Earth’s 800 billion tropical trees with trunk diameters of at least 10 cm. Despite differing biogeographic, climatic and anthropogenic histories7, we find notably consistent patterns of common species and species abundance distributions across the continents. This suggests that fundamental mechanisms of tree community assembly may apply to all tropical forests. Resampling analyses show that the most common species are likely to belong to a manageable list of known species, enabling targeted efforts to understand their ecology. Although they do not detract from the importance of rare species, our results open new opportunities to understand the world’s most diverse forests, including modelling their response to environmental change, by focusing on the common species that constitute the majority of their trees.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

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

Uso de remanescentes florestais pela anurofauna da região noroeste do estado de São Paulo

O presente estudo teve como objetivo verificar os fatores determinantes da estrutura de comunidades de anuros em corpos d’água e no interior de fragmentos florestais na região noroeste do estado de São Paulo. Foram amostrados 51 corpos d’água por busca em sitio de reprodução e o interior de oito fragmentos florestais por armadilhas de interceptação e queda. Primeiramente analisamos a influência de variáveis locais e da paisagem na riqueza e composição de espécies nos corpos d’água. A riqueza de espécies foi afetada por variáveis de escala local: cobertura vegetal e profundidade (relação positiva) e número de tipos de vegetação (relação negativa). Entretanto, as variáveis da paisagem influenciaram a riqueza de espécies em guildas: a distância até o corpo d’água mais próximo influenciou positivamente a riqueza de anuros escaladores e a vegetação ao redor do corpo d’água influenciou negativamente a riqueza de anuros associados a formações abertas. A composição da fauna de anuros nos corpos d’água pode ser explicada principalmente pelas variáveis ambientais (26,2%) e pela localização espacial dos corpos d’água (19,3%). A combinação entre variáveis ambientais e espaciais explica 7,3% da variação na composição da fauna. As variáveis ambientais que mais influenciaram a variação na composição de espécies foram a velocidade da água e a cobertura vegetal no interior do corpo d’água. A composição de espécies é influenciada por substituição de espécies entre corpos d’água lóticos e lênticos e perda de espécies, que pode ser causada pela redução da quantidade de vegetação no interior dos ambientes lênticos. Além disso, a distância entre os corpos d’água amostrados também foi importante na variação da composição de espécies, refletindo a distribuição geográfica das espécies. Esse resultado evidencia...Our aim in this study was to establish the key factors structuring anuran communities along water bodies and forest fragments in the northwestern Sao Paulo state. We sampled 51 water bodies using search at breeding sites method, furthermore we used pitfall traps to survey the anuran fauna in eight forest fragments. First we analyzed how water bodies attributes influence species richness and composition at local and landscape scales. Species richness was influenced by local attributes: vegetation cover and water depth (positive relation) and number of vegetation types (negative relation). However, landscape attributes influenced the richness of guilds: distance to the near water body positively influenced the richness of climber anurans and vegetation around the water body influenced negatively the richness of anurans associated with open formations. The composition of the anuran fauna in the water bodies can be explained mainly by the environmental variables (26.2%) and the spatial position of water bodies (19.3%). The combination of spatial and environmental variables explains 7.3% of the variation in the faunal composition. The environmental variables that most influenced the variation in species composition were the water velocity and vegetation cover within the water body. The species composition is regulated by species turnover between lentic and lotic water bodies, and species loss caused by the reduction in the amount of vegetation within lentic environments. Moreover, the distance between the sampled water bodies was also important to explain the variation in species composition, reflecting the geographic distribution of species. This result demonstrates that the conservation of anuran species richness in the water bodies of the studied region, demand the conservation of many types of water bodies at several localities, rather than just protect a large patch of habitat... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP

Similaridade ecológica em comunidades de girinos: o papel de componentes históricos (filogenéticos) e contemporâneos (ecológicos)

Uma limitação nos estudos em ecologia de comunidades é a interpretação dos processos com base apenas em mecanismos contemporâneos, pois muitos padrões podem ser explicados com base nas linhagens evolutivas da comunidade. O objetivo deste estudo foi investigar a influência do parentesco nos padrões de uso de recursos (microhábitat e alimento) para os girinos de duas comunidades. Para isso, foi determinada a similaridade no uso de micro-hábitat e na dieta e aplicada a metodologia filogenética para caracteres orais e do condrocrânio dos girinos de 19 espécies da região noroeste do estado de São Paulo. As amostragens foram mensais, entre outubro de 2003 e maio de 2004, completando uma estação chuvosa. Para a obtenção das relações de parentesco entre as espécies, caracteres orais e do condrocrânio foram analisados pela metodologia filogenética. Como grupo externo, foram utilizados girinos de Discoglossidae. Os dados de uso de recursos foram analisados em uma escala mais detalhada e em outra mais ampla. A análise histórica foi realizada plotando os dados de uso de recursos sobre o cladograma, representando as relações de parentesco entre as espécies. A escala utilizada para descrição do uso de microhábitat influenciou o resultado obtido. Numa escala de mais detalhada foram evidenciadas variação intra-específica e no padrão geral das duas comunidades, de acordo com as dimensões do corpo d’água: os girinos ocuparam regiões mais profundas e distantes da margem na poça permanente, e essa ocupação pode estar relacionada com as maiores dimensões desta poça. Já o panorama resultante da análise efetuada para girinos de 19 espécies numa escala mais ampla é muito diferente: os girinos de “leptodactilídeos” presentemente estudados mantiveram o padrão plesiomórfico de Neobatrachia, indicando...A limitation in the studies in community ecology is just the interpretation of the processes based on contemporary mechanisms, as many patterns can be explained based on the community's evolutionary lineages. The objective of this study was to investigate the phylogenetic influence in the patterns of resource use (microhábitat and food) for two tadpoles’ communities. The similarity in the microhabitat use and in the diet between tadpoles of two communities was determined. These tadpoles were sampled monthly, between October of 2003 and May of 2004, along the rainy season. For the elaboration of an evolutionary hypothesis among species, oral and chondrocranial morphology of tadpoles of 19 species from northwestern region of São Paulo state were analyzed by phylogenetic methodology. Tadpoles of Discoglossidae were used as outgroup. The historical analysis of the resource use was made constrasting these data with the cladogram that represent the evolutionary relationship among the species, and analyzed in a detailed and in a broad scales. The used scale for microhabitat use influenced the results. In a more detailed scale the intraspecific variation was highlighted and caused the two communities to differ in the general pattern of tadpoles’ distribution, according to the pond size: tadpoles’ occupied areas deeper and distant from the margin in the permanent pond, which could be related to the largest size of this pond. In a broad scale the “leptodactylids” at present study maintained the plesiomorphic pattern of Neobatrachia, indicating a conservative evolutionary history, while the “hylids” diverged in the microhabitat use. The groups formed by the similarity analysis were basically constituted for (1) species little abundant, allowing the coexistence of species with high niche superposition; (2) ...(Complete abstract click electronic access below)Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP