Comunidades de fungos em jardins de formigas cortadeiras com diferentes hábitos de forrageamento

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

A similaridade no uso do microhabitat por girinos (Amphibia, Anura) reflete processos ecológicos ou filogenéticos?

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Ecological relevance of sentinels' biomarker responses: A multi-level approach

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Helminth parasite communities of allopatric populations of the frog Leptodactylus podicipinus from Pantanal, Brazil

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Variance partitioning of deconstructed periphyton communities: does the use of biological traits matter?

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Metacommunity structuring in stream networks: roles of dispersal mode, distance type, and regional environmental context

Within a metacommunity, both environmental and spatial processes regulate variation in local community structure. The strength of these processes may vary depending on species traits (e.g., dispersal mode) or the characteristics of the regions studied (e.g., spatial extent, environmental heterogeneity). We studied the metacommunity structuring of three groups of stream macroinvertebrates differing in their overland dispersal mode (passive dispersers with aquatic adults; passive dispersers with terrestrial adults; active dispersers with terrestrial adults). We predicted that environmental structuring should be more important for active dispersers, because of their better ability to track environmental variability, and that spatial structuring should be more important for species with aquatic adults, because of stronger dispersal limitation. We sampled a total of 70 stream riffle sites in three drainage basins. Environmental heterogeneity was unrelated to spatial extent among our study regions, allowing us to examine the effects of these two factors on metacommunity structuring. We used partial redundancy analysis and Moran's eigenvector maps based on overland and watercourse distances to study the relative importance of environmental control and spatial structuring. We found that, compared with environmental control, spatial structuring was generally negligible, and it did not vary according to our predictions. In general, active dispersers with terrestrial adults showed stronger environmental control than the two passively dispersing groups, suggesting that the species dispersing actively are better able to track environmental variability. There were no clear differences in the results based on watercourse and overland distances. The variability in metacommunity structuring among basins was not related to the differences in the environmental heterogeneity and spatial extent. Our study emphasized that (1) environmental control is prevailing in stream metacommunities, (2) dispersal mode may have an important effect on metacommunity structuring, and (3) some factors other than spatial extent or environmental heterogeneity contributed to the differences among the basins.

Perspectives on the use of lakes and ponds as model systems for macroecological research

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Decay of interspecific avian flock networks along a disturbance gradient in Amazonia

Our understanding of how anthropogenic habitat change shapes species interactions is in its infancy. This is in large part because analytical approaches such as network theory have only recently been applied to characterize complex community dynamics. Network models are a powerful tool for quantifying how ecological interactions are affected by habitat modification because they provide metrics that quantify community structure and function. Here, we examine how large-scale habitat alteration has affected ecological interactions among mixed-species flocking birds in Amazonian rainforest. These flocks provide a model system for investigating how habitat heterogeneity influences non-trophic interactions and the subsequent social structure of forest-dependent mixed-species bird flocks. We analyse 21 flock interaction networks throughout a mosaic of primary forest, fragments of varying sizes and secondary forest (SF) at the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project in central Amazonian Brazil. Habitat type had a strong effect on network structure at the levels of both species and flock. Frequency of associations among species, as summarized by weighted degree, declined with increasing levels of forest fragmentation and SF. At the flock level, clustering coefficients and overall attendance positively correlated with mean vegetation height, indicating a strong effect of habitat structure on flock cohesion and stability. Prior research has shown that trophic interactions are often resilient to large-scale changes in habitat structure because species are ecologically redundant. By contrast, our results suggest that behavioural interactions and the structure of non-trophic networks are highly sensitive to environmental change. Thus, a more nuanced, system-by-system approach may be needed when thinking about the resiliency of ecological networks.

Short-term effects of visitor trampling on macroinvertebrates in karst streams in an ecotourism region

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Disentangling the Phylogenetic and Ecological Components of Spider Phenotypic Variation

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

The roles of environmental conditions and spatial factors in controlling stream macroalgal communities

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Composição e estrutura da comunidade arbórea e arbustiva em murundus no Pantanal de Poconé, Mato Grosso

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Riqueza, abundância e sazonalidade de comunidades de macroalgas em diferentes escalas espaciais em riachos da região centr-sul do estado do Paraná

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Estudo de comunidades de foraminíferos em manguezal do Rio Itapanhaú, Bertioga-SP, aplicado à reconstrução paleoambiental

Foraminifera scientific studies became, historically, of your apply in relative dating of rocks, stratigraphic correlations and paleoenvironmental reconstruction. In the last decades, they have been applied on the studies of modern ecosystems, with or without antrhopic influence. Both aspects are interest of petroleum industry. Among other approaches, foraminífera are used as good indicators of the fluctuation of relative sea level. This study aimed to survey and taxonomic study of the community structure of foraminifera in surface samples of a core, 60 cm, collected in mangrove located in Itapanhaú river in Bertioga (SP).It also aims to contribute to the discussion about typical patterns of community structure of mangrove margins and provide elements for discussion on the relative sea level behavior in this area in almost modern times. It was been collected 6 samples along the core of 60 cm of length, each one 10 cm depth. They were made in laboratory and in each sample sought to find at least 100 foraminifera per ml. The species identification was made with reference specified material and collection available on IGCE-UNESPetro, Rio Claro. The community structure was studied in terms of richness, diversity and species composition and was made the results comparison from similar areas to interpret the depositional environment. Were found 21 species within them 13 calcareous and 8 binders, being the most abundant and frequent species Ammonia tepida, Ammonia parkinsoniana e Elphidium spp. Essentially there wasn’t change in the community structure within the period covered by the core which reflects an environment of outer margin of mangrove without noticeable change in relative sea level at the respective time of deposition of muddy sediments. The community structure here recognized its similar to estuarine environment well maintained which indicates a low human impact in the area over the time interval. The agreement of the results...

Determinação de comunidades em redes biológicas integradas

To understand how biological phenomena emerge, the nonlinear interactions among the components envolved in these and the correspondent connected elements, like genes, proteins, etc., can be represented by a mathematical object called graph or network, where interacting elements are represented by edges connecting pairs of nodes. The analysis of various graph-related properties of biological networks has revealed many clues about biological processes. Among these properties, the community structure, i.e. groups of nodes densely connected among themselves, but sparsely connected to other groups, are important for identifying separable functional modules within biological systems for the comprehension of the high-level organization of the cell. Communities' detection can be performed by many algorithms, but most of them are based on the density of interactions among nodes of the same community. So far, the detection and analysis of network communities in biological networks have only been pursued for networks composed by one type of interaction (e.g. protein-protein interactions or metabolic interactions). Since a real biological network is simultaneously composed by protein-protein, metabolic and transcriptional regulatory interactions, it would be interesting to investigate how communities are organized in this type of network. For this purpose, we detected the communities in an integrated biological network of the Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae by using the Clique Percolation Method and we veri ed, by calculating the frequency of each type of interaction and its related entropy, if components of communities... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)