ORCID Profile
0000-0001-5627-4017
Current Organisation
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
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Publisher: Wiley
Date: 02-07-2021
DOI: 10.1111/AEC.13079
Abstract: Nest survival is a key step in the reproductive biology of birds and is essential for understanding the strategies used to improve the chances of nest success. Here we studied the main factors driving nesting success of the C o Miner Geositta poeciloptera (Scleruridae), a threatened Neotropical grassland bird that nests in cavities, usually along steep soil banks. We calculated the apparent success and modelled daily nest survival rates (DSR) based on 86 nests monitored to investigate the effects of nest‐related covariates on the nest survival. In the DSR modelling, we looked at the effects of reproductive phase (incubation and nestling periods), breeding seasons (years), temporal‐trends (linear and quadratic) rainfall and nest’s in idual covariates (height, distance from the top of the cavity to the top of the bank, cavity depth and cavity entrance area). The overall apparent nest success was 58% and estimates based on DSRs were ˜45%. Nest phase, cavity entrance area, nest height and a linear time trend were the main factors influencing DSRs. The survival during incubation was lower (˜54%) than during the nestling period (˜83%), and both phases showed higher values in the beginning of the breeding season. Predation was the main driver of nest failure (23.3%, N = 20), followed by nest abandonment (10.5%, N = 9) and nest usurpation (7%, N = 6). Our results allow us to better understand and conserve this threatened species and also shed light in the reproductive ecology of a whole family endemic to the Neotropics.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 16-07-2018
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 23-05-2023
DOI: 10.1111/AEC.13369
Abstract: Changes in vegetation cover due to increasing frequencies of extreme climate events and anthropogenic pressure are already underway so, predicting the impacts of the near‐future climate will be essential for developing mitigation strategies. We modelled the responses of Brazilian biomes to a future scenario (2070) of steady increases in atmospheric CO 2 levels, adding soil data to better represent the multidimensional space of the environmental suitability of each biome. We also assessed the effects of changes in environmental suitability on the Brazilian network of protected areas and projected those effects on 1 km resolution maps. The area predicted to be affected by future climate change in Brazil and the consequent loss of suitable habitat surface is 2.59 Mkm 2 – larger than the combined areas of Central America and Mexico – leading the current vegetation to a progressive replacement. We project major changes in the vegetation of the Amazon basin, with the replacement of rainforest by dryer vegetation in the southern and eastern regions of that basin, and the opening of a dry corridor in Pará State. We also project an expansion of 41% of the current caatinga cover in the Brazilian semiarid region, with large losses of suitable habitat surface of the current deciduous forest. Approximately, 37% of the coverage of protected areas in Brazil will be affected – with greater damage to indigenous lands. The speed of current environmental change is now unprecedented for the post‐glacial era, and will almost certainly lead to increased rates of extinction and the collapse of transition ecosystems. We propose the urgent creation of protected areas in regions designed without significant impacts, but contiguous to those that will be more seriously affected by climate change. Those areas will act as refugia preserving bio ersity, ecosystem services, and the cultural heritages of traditional populations.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 29-06-2016
DOI: 10.1038/NATURE18326
Abstract: Concerted political attention has focused on reducing deforestation, and this remains the cornerstone of most bio ersity conservation strategies. However, maintaining forest cover may not reduce anthropogenic forest disturbances, which are rarely considered in conservation programmes. These disturbances occur both within forests, including selective logging and wildfires, and at the landscape level, through edge, area and isolation effects. Until now, the combined effect of anthropogenic disturbance on the conservation value of remnant primary forests has remained unknown, making it impossible to assess the relative importance of forest disturbance and forest loss. Here we address these knowledge gaps using a large data set of plants, birds and dung beetles (1,538, 460 and 156 species, respectively) s led in 36 catchments in the Brazilian state of Pará. Catchments retaining more than 69–80% forest cover lost more conservation value from disturbance than from forest loss. For ex le, a 20% loss of primary forest, the maximum level of deforestation allowed on Amazonian properties under Brazil’s Forest Code, resulted in a 39–54% loss of conservation value: 96–171% more than expected without considering disturbance effects. We extrapolated the disturbance-mediated loss of conservation value throughout Pará, which covers 25% of the Brazilian Amazon. Although disturbed forests retained considerable conservation value compared with deforested areas, the toll of disturbance outside Pará’s strictly protected areas is equivalent to the loss of 92,000–139,000 km2 of primary forest. Even this lowest estimate is greater than the area deforested across the entire Brazilian Amazon between 2006 and 2015 (ref. 10). Species distribution models showed that both landscape and within-forest disturbances contributed to bio ersity loss, with the greatest negative effects on species of high conservation and functional value. These results demonstrate an urgent need for policy interventions that go beyond the maintenance of forest cover to safeguard the hyper- ersity of tropical forest ecosystems.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 16-06-2016
DOI: 10.1017/S0266467416000298
Abstract: Ant gardens (AGs) are specialized ant-plant associations where arboreal ants build their carton nests in association with epiphytes that use the carton as a substrate. Most of the epiphytes are planted by ants therefore, seed selection by ants is a key driver of the epiphyte composition of AGs. However, deterministic post-dispersal factors, such as the surrounding environmental conditions and plant succession, may also influence epiphyte composition. Here we ask whether epiphyte composition on a local scale is associated with dispersal constraints, local environmental conditions (light availability, number of branches and nest height) or AG successional stage. We s led all epiphyte species in 18 AGs formed by C onotus femoratus and Crematogaster levior in Central Amazon, Brazil. AGs were located within a range of 1 km and at a maximum of 20 m from the edges of a dirt road within a primary forest. Epiphytic composition showed strong spatial structure, decreasing in similarity with increasing distance. Environmental conditions and AG successional stage were not related to AG floristic composition, suggesting a key role of stochastic processes related to seed dispersal. A combination of seed abundance and attractiveness in neighbouring AGs seems to drive the higher similarity in epiphyte composition among closer AGs.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-2020
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 21-03-2021
DOI: 10.1002/ECY.3301
Abstract: Herbivory is ubiquitous. Despite being a potential driver of plant distribution and performance, herbivory remains largely undocumented. Some early attempts have been made to review, globally, how much leaf area is removed through insect feeding. Kozlov et al., in one of the most comprehensive reviews regarding global patterns of herbivory, have compiled published studies regarding foliar removal and s led data on global herbivory levels using a standardized protocol. However, in the review by Kozlov et al., only 15 s ling sites, comprising 33 plant species, were evaluated in tropical areas around the globe. In Brazil, which ranks first in terms of plant bio ersity, with a total of 46,097 species, almost half (43%) being endemic, a single data point was s led, covering only two plant species. In an attempt to increase knowledge regarding herbivory in tropical plant species and to provide the raw data needed to test general hypotheses related to plant–herbivore interactions across large spatial scales, we proposed a joint, collaborative network to evaluate tropical herbivory. This network allowed us to update and expand the data on insect herbivory in tropical and temperate plant species. Our data set, collected with a standardized protocol, covers 45 s ling sites from nine countries and includes leaf herbivory measurements of 57,239 leaves from 209 species of vascular plants belonging to 65 families from tropical and temperate regions. They expand previous data sets by including a total of 32 s ling sites from tropical areas around the globe, comprising 152 species, 146 of them being s led in Brazil. For temperate areas, it includes 13 s ling sites, comprising 59 species. Thus, when compared to the most recent comprehensive review of insect herbivory (Kozlov et al.), our data set has increased the base of available data for the tropical plants more than 460% (from 33 to 152 species) and the Brazilian s ling was increased 7,300% (from 2 to 146 species). Data on precise levels of herbivory are presented for more than 57,000 leaves worldwide. There are no copyright restrictions. Please cite this paper when using the current data in publications the authors request to be informed how the data is used in the publications.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 04-10-2018
DOI: 10.1111/GCB.14443
Abstract: Secondary forests (SFs) regenerating on previously deforested land account for large, expanding areas of tropical forest cover. Given that tropical forests rank among Earth's most important reservoirs of carbon and bio ersity, SFs play an increasingly pivotal role in the carbon cycle and as potential habitat for forest biota. Nevertheless, their capacity to regain the biotic attributes of undisturbed primary forests (UPFs) remains poorly understood. Here, we provide a comprehensive assessment of SF recovery, using extensive tropical bio ersity, biomass, and environmental datasets. These data, collected in 59 naturally regenerating SFs and 30 co-located UPFs in the eastern Amazon, cover >1,600 large- and small-stemmed plant, bird, and dung beetles species and a suite of forest structure, landscape context, and topoedaphic predictors. After up to 40 years of regeneration, the SFs we surveyed showed a high degree of bio ersity resilience, recovering, on average among taxa, 88% and 85% mean UPF species richness and composition, respectively. Across the first 20 years of succession, the period for which we have accurate SF age data, biomass recovered at 1.2% per year, equivalent to a carbon uptake rate of 2.25 Mg/ha per year, while, on average, species richness and composition recovered at 2.6% and 2.3% per year, respectively. For all taxonomic groups, biomass was strongly associated with SF species distributions. However, other variables describing habitat complexity-canopy cover and understory stem density-were equally important occurrence predictors for most taxa. Species responses to biomass revealed a successional transition at approximately 75 Mg/ha, marking the influx of high-conservation-value forest species. Overall, our results show that naturally regenerating SFs can accumulate substantial amounts of carbon and support many forest species. However, given that the surveyed SFs failed to return to a typical UPF state, SFs are not substitutes for UPFs.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 26-07-2023
DOI: 10.1111/AEC.13394
Abstract: Changes in vegetation cover due to increasing frequencies of extreme climate events and anthropogenic pressure are already underway so, predicting the impacts of the near‐future climate will be essential for developing mitigation strategies. We modelled the responses of Brazilian biomes to a future scenario (2070) of steady increases in atmospheric CO levels, adding soil data to better represent the multidimensional space of the environmental suitability of each biome. We also assessed the effects of changes in environmental suitability on the Brazilian network of protected areas and projected those effects on 1 km resolution maps. The area predicted to be affected by future climate change in Brazil and the consequent loss of suitable habitat surface is 2.59 Mkm 2 – larger than the combined areas of Central America and Mexico – leading the current vegetation to a progressive replacement. We project major changes in the vegetation of the Amazon basin, with the replacement of rainforest by dryer vegetation in the southern and eastern regions of that basin, and the opening of a dry corridor in Pará State. We also project an expansion of 41% of the current caatinga cover in the Brazilian semiarid region, with large losses of suitable habitat surface of the current deciduous forest. Approximately, 37% of the coverage of protected areas in Brazil will be affected – with greater damage to indigenous lands. The speed of current environmental change is now unprecedented for the post‐glacial era, and will almost certainly lead to increased rates of extinction and the collapse of transition ecosystems. We propose the urgent creation of protected areas in regions designed without significant impacts, but contiguous to those that will be more seriously affected by climate change. Those areas will act as refugia preserving bio ersity, ecosystem services, and the cultural heritages of traditional populations.
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Date: 02-10-2020
Abstract: When designing terrestrial reserves, it is common to consider the needs of species and systems from a terrestrial perspective, with an assumption that any freshwater systems will benefit as well. Leal et al. tested this assumption by analyzing data from two locations in the Brazilian Amazon and found that it is far from accurate: Terrestrial systems confer little benefit to freshwater systems (see the Perspective by Abell and Harrison). However, the authors also found that integrating the needs of freshwater species into overall reserve planning increased freshwater benefits by 600% while only decreasing terrestrial outcomes by 1%. They argue that reserve planning must take freshwater systems into account if they are to protect across both realms. Science , this issue p. 117 see also p. 38
No related grants have been discovered for Ricardo Ribeiro de Castro Solar.