Functional Connectivity and Landscape Anthropization: A case study in the National Forest of Silvânia and Rio Vermelho River Microbasin.The general objective of this project is to evaluate landscape connectivity between the National Forest of Silvânia with the forest remnants around it, as well as the effects of anthropic impacts upon the biodiversity from the Rio Vermelho's microbasin, where the National Forest is inserted. Specific objectives are: 1) Evaluate the effects of landscape changes and anthropic disturbance upon the structure of biological communities; 2) Evaluate the effects of agrochemical defensive substances and soil fertilization upon the biological communities structure; 3) Evaluate the effects of anthropic disturbances and landscape changes upon the abundance of exotic plant species; 4) Evaluate the landscape change by anthropic disturbances upon the genetic diversity ad connectivity of biological populations within the National Forest and surrounding fragments with natural fragments; 5) Establish a network of conservation and management between the National Forest and the surrounding fragments, to increase the connectivity between the forest remnants within the Rio Vermelho's microbasin; 6) Help to plan seed surveys to enrich the plant nursery plant within Silvânia's Natural Forest, for the recovery of degraded areas within the Natural Forest, considering both the genetic and the community data structure obtained from the field surveys; 7. Establish an environmental education programme, with monitored visits of schools from Silvânia and surrounding cities. Funding: CNPq. ​

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National Institute of Science and Technology - Ecology, Evolution, and Biodiversity Conservation.The NIST in Ecology, Evolution, and Biodiversity Conservation (EECBIO) will unite specialists in the main areas of biodiversity, consolidating a research network and formation of excellency resources in this field. The comprehension of the patterns and processes related to the origin and maintenance of biological diversity, in different spatial scales and different levels of biological hierarchy allows that adequate measures are taken to conserve them. This is fundamental for the maintenance of ecosystem services that benefit human societies. Therefore, the EECBIO will be an international reference in biodiversity analyses (with strong theoretical and methodological components) and its conservation, highlighting the importance of the networking and interaction of researchers from different biological areas with the aim to innovate and define new directions of research and intervention towards biodiversity conservation. Funding: CNPq.

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Biodiversity and socio-economic impacts of palm oil bioenergy development in the Brazilian Amazon. The goal of this study is to evaluate the impacts of palm oil plantation expansion in the Brazilian Amazon in three interconnected dimensions: environmental, policy and socioeconomic. The study case focal area is the Pará State, northern Brazil. These issues will be assessed from a multi-stakeholder?s perspective, including the views of government agencies, private palm oil companies and affected small landholders. We will use mixed methods of social and natural science research (both qualitative and quantitative) to collect data, specifically evaluating how policies for palm oil crop expansion affect protected areas, biodiversity and local communities (social groups), currently and in the future. These three dimensions will provide a holistic understanding of palm oil based biodiesel impacts in Brazil to suggest means for achieving a sustainable palm oil production in the country. Specifically we intend to: 1) evaluate public policies for the biofuel sector and their relationship to biodiversity and protected areas (legal reserves) policies; 2) define the main drivers for biofuel crop expansion and implications for protected areas and biodiversity conservation as evidenced by species richness and abundance of terrestrial arthropods, aquatic biota, amphibians and birds; 3) assess the impact of palm oil cropping systems for biofuel development on socioeconomic systems. The study will focus on the Pará municipalities included in the Belém Endemism Center such as Moju, Igarapé-Mirim, Tailândia, Tomé-Açu, Acará and Concórdia do Pará, on the basis that these communities concentrate current and projected palm oil plantations according to the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE). The project will combine the expertise of natural and social scientists to investigate socio- ecological impacts of the palm oil biofuel industry currently under development in the one of the most endangered and complex human-modified landscape in Brazilian Amazon. Funding: USAID; Conservação Internacional.

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Sampling bias, potential distribution, and conservation priorities for Brazilian Euglossini bees.  Human activities that are reponsible for intensive and profund impacts upon biodiversity are increasing global concerns towards species conservation. Considering macroecological scales, practical conservation actions devoted to species conservation depend on distributional data availability. Nonetheless, the availability of such data is still scant, especially in tropical regions of the planet. Such "Wallacean" data deficit is the main bootleneck hindering an effective conservation biogeography of species at large spatial scales. Insects (and arthropods in general) are usually poorly known biogeographically speaking, despite their extreme ecosystemic importance elsewhere. Even the distribution of bees, an insect group responsible for an important ecosystem service (plant pollination), is usually poorly-known. Given the fact that human activities are the main drivers of environmental changes (e.g. future climate changes) that are expected to cause severe biodiversity problems, the main objectives of this project are 1) Build a broad scale occurrence records dataset for the Brazilian euglossine bees; 2) Evaluate which will be the main sampling biases determining the sampling patterns at macroecological scales within Brazil; 3) Evaluate whether this bee group is protected within Brazilian Conservation Units, using species distribution models (SDMs), under current and future climatic scenarios.

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Invasive exotic plants in Brazil: Detection of suitable areas and the effects of future climate changes.The introduction of invasive exotic species is one of the greatest current and future problems that will affect biodiversity in both local and regional scales. These species may alter nutrient cycling, energy fluxes, and both fauna and flora composition throughout ecosystems, negatively affecting the most diverse ecological services and causing several economic and health problems, also affecting traditional activities worldwide. Anthropic changes, such as habitat destruction and global climate changes are potential processes intensifying the effects of exotic invasive species upon biodiversity. In a recent survey, it was estimated that nearly 117 exotic invasive plant species have a great invasive potential in Brazil., although the real numbers may reach several thousands species. In this project, we intend to evaluate whether these species have their invasive potential intensified by 1) human-caused environmental changes, 2) human-caused climate changes, and whether during their invasion process if 3) they have their ecological niches shifted. Therefore, we will use their occurrence records to generate potential distribution models, considering the anthropic actions and their future models of climate change. In this context, we will verify if those two factors will amplify or retract the potential distribution of these species in both scenarios. Using multivariate analyses of ecological niches, we intend to evaluate whether and how the species’ niches shifted from their native distribution to the exotic ones after their invasions. With the generated results, we intend to indicate areas where management needs to be a priority in order to minimize the pervasive effects of these species upon native plant communities in Brazil. Finally, we intend to create an online webpage for promote more knowledge regarding these species, aiming to increase public awareness and perception regarding the occurrence of these species in Brazilian ecosystems. Hypothesis #1: Niche shifts of the invasive species after their invasion. The basic assumption regarding this hypothesis is that many invasive exotic species, with high reproductive capacity, also maintain high shift rates and adaptation capacity to new environmental conditions. If that is true, the environmental conditions in their invaded areas are expected to be different from the environmental conditions regarding the species’ native areas. Such hypothesis will be tested comparing both native and exotic environmental conditions of the plant species considered by Zenni & Ziller (2011) for which we are able to gather their native regions origins and utilizing the methods proposed by Broennimann et al. (2012). Hypothesis #2: Climate change will affect the future suitable areas for the invasive exotic species. The main assumption of this hypothesis is that global climate changes are important agents of geographic distribution changes of organisms worldwide. Therefore, it is believed that the future potential distribution of invasive exotic species ranked by Zenni & Ziller (2011) will be different when compared to the potential distribution of the invasive exotic species in current climatic scenarios.