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

The role of ecological niche evolution on diversification patterns of birds distinctly distributed between the Amazonia and Atlantic rainforests.

The Amazonian and Atlantic Forest share several organisms that are currently isolated but were continuously distributed during the Quaternary period. As both biomes are under different climatic regimes, paleoclimatic events may have modulated species' niches due to a lack of gene flow and imposing divergent selection pressure. Here, we assessed patterns of ecological niche overlap in 37 species of birds with disjunct ranges between the Amazonian and Brazilian Atlantic Forests. We performed niche overlap analysis and ecological niche modeling using four machine-learning algorithms to evaluate whether species' ecological niches evolved or remained conserved after the past South American biogeographic events. We found a low niche overlap among the same species populations in the two biomes. However, niche similarity tests showed that, for half of the species, the overlap was higher than the ones generated by our null models. These results lead us to conclude that niche conservatism was not enough to avoid ecological differentiation among species even though detected in many species. In sum, our results support the role of climatic changes in late-Pleistocene-that isolated Amazon and the Atlantic Forest-as a driving force of ecological differences among the same species populations and potential mechanism of current diversification in both regions

Evaluation of the Potential of Brazilian Red Propolis Extracts: An Analysis of the Chemical Composition and Biological Properties

The optimized extraction process of natural matrices such as propolis that results in extracts with significant compounds has been one of the main needs of the industry. The aim of this work was to analyze the content of the active components of Brazilian red propolis extracts previously treated with ultrasound, as well as to evaluate in vitro their performance regarding antioxidant capacity and against bacteria and tumor cells. The results of the chromatographic analysis showed the influence of ultrasound treatment for higher yields of formononetin and kaempferol. However, just a higher content of these two components was not enough to interfere with higher concentrations of phenolic compounds and flavonoids among the extracts. The ten extracts obtained showed activity against two bacterial strains, and eight of them showed >70% cytotoxicity against five neoplastic cell lines. These results demonstrated the influence of ultrasound technology as a pretreatment in obtaining the ethanolic extracts of propolis, increasing the possibility of the applicability of Brazilian red propolis in different areas

Chagas disease in urban and peri urban environment in the Amazon: Sentinel hosts, vectors, and the environment

This work was supported by The Pro-Amazônia Biodiversity and Sustainability project was financed by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES), notice 047/2012, AUXPE 3286/2013 - Process 23,038.009430 / 2013–98.Universidade Federal do Pará. Instituto de Medicina Veterinária. Castanhal, PA, Brazil.Universidade Federal do Pará. Instituto de Medicina Veterinária. Castanhal, PA, Brazil.Universidade Federal do Pará. Instituto de Medicina Veterinária. Castanhal, PA, Brazil.Universidade Federal do Pará. Instituto de Medicina Veterinária. Castanhal, PA, Brazil.Universidade Federal do Pará. Instituto de Medicina Veterinária. Castanhal, PA, Brazil.Universidade Federal do Pará. Instituto de Medicina Veterinária. Castanhal, PA, Brazil.Universidade Federal do Pará. Instituto de Medicina Veterinária. Castanhal, PA, Brazil.Universidade Federal do Pará. Instituto de Medicina Veterinária. Castanhal, PA, Brazil.Universidade Federal do Pará. Instituto de Medicina Veterinária. Castanhal, PA, Brazil.Universidade Federal do Pará. Instituto de Medicina Veterinária. Castanhal, PA, Brazil.Universidade Federal do Pará. Instituto de Medicina Veterinária. Castanhal, PA, Brazil.Universidade Federal do Pará. Instituto de Medicina Veterinária. Castanhal, PA, Brazil.Ministério da Saúde. Secretaria de Vigilância em Saúde. Instituto Evandro Chagas. Laboratório de Geoprocessamento. Ananindeua, PA, Brasil.Universidade Federal do Pará. Instituto de Ciências Biológicas. Laboratório de Ecologia e Zoologia de Vertebrados. Belém PA, Brazil.Universidade Federal do Pará. Instituto de Medicina Veterinária. Castanhal, PA, Brazil.Universidade Federal do Pará. Instituto de Medicina Veterinária. Castanhal, PA, Brazil.Chagas disease is an anthropozoonosis, caused by a flagellated protozoan, Trypanosoma cruzi, in which the enzootic cycle occurs between mammals and triatomines. Two dogs with a history of sudden death were necropsied at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA). One dog had a pale area in the myocardium, which on histopathological examination showed a T. cruzi amastigote nest; immunohistochemistry (IHC) analysis characterized it as acute Chagas disease (ACD). The second dog showed no macroscopic changes. Microscopically, a few cardiomyocytes were replaced by adipocytes, and IHC result was negative for T. cruzi. However, results of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) of the cardiac tissue of both dogs was positive for T. cruzi DNA. After that, an epidemiological study was conducted in the region. For this study, we selected four areas in Castanhal. One of the four areas (Area 1) is where one of the dogs lived. The other three areas were chosen because they were recently deforested for housing. Blood samples were collected from dogs, cats, wild small mammals (marsupials and rodents), and the digestive tract of triatomines. Nested PCR was performed on all the blood samples and the triatomine digestive tracts. In Area 1, T. cruzi DNA was detected in 50% (12/24) of the tested dogs, in the only tested cat (1/1), 50% (1/2) of the tested marsupials (Didelphis marsupials), and 100% of the captured triatomines (Rhodnius pictipes) (2/2). In Area 2, T. cruzi DNA was not detected in any of the 11 (0/11) dogs and two marsupials tested (0/2), and no triatomines were found in this area. In Area 3, T. cruzi DNA was detected in 42.25% (30/71) of the dogs, in 66,6% (2/3) of the cats, the only captured marsupial (D. marsupialis) (1/1), and all three triatomines (3/3) (R. pictipes) tested. In Area 4, the two dogs tested were negative (0/2), 25% (1/4) of the captured marsupials (D. marsupialis) was positive, and no triatomine was captured in this area. The data demonstrate the importance of detecting T. cruzi in dogs, cats, small rodents, and marsupials in the Amazon metropolitan areas, where ecotopes carry reservoirs and vectors capable of participating in the Chagas disease cycle. The proximity between humans and T. cruzi vectors in these places might contribute to increased disease transmission risk and maintenance of agents. It was noted that high-standard condominiums, previously thought to reduce the risk for this disease, presented a new epidemiological risk. The presence of T. cruzi DNA in a dog who, a year earlier had tested negative, when another dog in the same house died of ACD, shows that the transmission cycle is present and active, with a high possibility of disease transmission to animals and humans