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Made available in DSpace on 2022-04-28T19:52:53Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2022-04-12 SignificanceEnergetic constraints of flight and thermoregulation have long been thought to explain why most bat species are small and live predominantly in warm latitudes. We use physical models to investigate how body size, wing shape, and climate modulate these energetic constraints. Our model predicts that thermoregulatory and flight costs, respectively, impose upper and lower bounds on the wing surface-to-mass ratio, giving rise to an optimum shape, and that variations around this optimum are more constrained in cold regions. A comparative analysis across bat species supports the model's predictions, suggesting that body shape evolves toward an optimum with stronger selective pressures in cold regions. The model and data together suggest that thermoregulatory and locomotory constraints modulate the evolution of bats' morphology. Department of Biology McGill University Departamento de Biología y Geología Física y Química Inorgánica, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos Departamento de Ecologia Universidade Federal de Sergipe Red de Biología Evolutiva Instituto de Ecología A.C. Departamento de Biodiversidade Instituto de Biociências Universidade Estadual Paulista Júlio de Mesquita Filho Departamento de Biologia Universidade Federal de Sergipe Departamento de Fisiologia Instituto de Biociência Universidade de São Paulo Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Federal da Bahia, 40170-115 Salvador, BA, Brazil Departamento de Ecologia Instituto de Ciências Biológicas Universidade Federal de Goiás Departamento de Biodiversidade Instituto de Biociências Universidade Estadual Paulista Júlio de Mesquita Filho

As thousands of new cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed, there is an increasing demand to understand the factors underlying the spread of this disease. Using country-level data, we modeled the early growth in the number of cases for over 480 cities in all Brazilian states. As the main findings, we found that the percentage of people respecting social distancing protocols was the main explanatory factor for the observed growth rate of COVID-19. Those cities that presented the highest spread of the new coronavirus were also those that had lower averages of social distancing. We also underline that total population of cities and connectivity, represented by the city-level importance to the air transportation of people across the country, plays important roles in the dissemination of SARS-CoV-2. Climate and socioeconomic predictors had little contribution to the big-picture scenario. Our results show that different States had high variability in their growth rates, mostly due to quite different public health strategies to retain the outbreak of COVID-19. In spite of all limitations of such a large-scale approach, our results underline that climatic conditions are likely weak limiting factors for the spread of the new coronavirus, and the circulation of people in the city- and country-level are the most responsible factors for the early outbreak of COVID-19 in Brazil. Moreover, we reinforce that social distancing protocols are fundamental to avoid critical scenarios and the collapse of healthcare systems. We also predict that economic-induced decisions for relaxing social distancing might have catastrophic consequences, especially in large cities.

Primates occur in 90 countries, but four - Brazil, Madagascar, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)—harbor 65% of the world’s primate species (439) and 60% of these primates are Vulnerable, Endangered, or Critically Endangered (IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2017-3). Considering their importance for global primate conservation, we examine the anthropogenic pressures each country is facing that place their primate populations at risk. Habitat loss and fragmentation are main threats to primates in Brazil, Madagascar and Indonesia. However, in DRC hunting for the commercial bushmeat trade is the primary threat. Encroachment on primate habitats driven by local and global market demands for food and nonfood commodities hunting, illegal trade, the proliferation of invasive species, and human and domestic-animal borne infectious diseases cause habitat loss, population declines, and extirpation. Modeling agricultural expansion in the 21st century for the four countries under a worst-casescenario, showed a primate range contraction of 78% for Brazil, 72% for Indonesia 62% for Madagascar and 32% for DRC. These pressures unfold in the context of expanding human populations with low levels of development. Weak governance across these four countries may limit effective primate conservation planning. We examine landscape and local approaches to effective primate conservation policies and assess the distribution of protected areas and primates in each country. P rimates in Brazil and Madagascar have 38% of their range inside protected areas, 17% in Indonesia and 14% in DRC, suggesting that the great majority of primate populations remain vulnerable. We list the key challenges faced by the four countries to avert primate extinctions now and in the future. In the short term, effective law enforcement to stop illegal hunting and illegal forest destruction is absolutely key. Long-term success can only be achieved by focusing local and global public awareness, actively engaging with international organizations, multinational businesses and consumer nations to reduce unsustainable demands on the environment. Finally, the four primate range states need to ensure that integrated, sustainable land-use planning for economic development includes the maintenance of biodiversity and intact, functional natural ecosystems.

A agricultura é a atividade humana com maior impacto sobre o ambiente. Particularmente, ela representa a maior ameaça à biodiversidade. No futuro, essa atividade deve expandir-se com o aumento populacional humano, o aumento do consumo e a produção de biocombustíveis a partir dos alimentos. Para entender os possíveis impactos dessa expansão sobre a biodiversidade, nós utilizamos cenários de mudança de uso do solo entre 2000 e 2100 do IMAGE (Integrated Model to Access Global Environment) para testar as seguintes hipóteses: (i) as áreas consideradas como prioridades globais de conservação pelas ONGs internacionais serão preferencialmente impactadas pela expansão agrícola no século XXI; (ii) há um conflito entre áreas prioritárias para a conservação de carnívoros e a expansão agrícola e esse conflito pode ser reduzido com a incorporação da informação sobre expansão agrícola no processo de priorização; (iii) a integração entre os países para o planejamento da conservação pode ser favorável à proteção da biodiversidade e à produção agrícola; (iv) no Brasil, as áreas protegidas serão impactadas pela expansão agrícola no futuro e esse impacto será diferente entre áreas de proteção integral e áreas de uso sustentável. Nós encontramos os seguintes resultados: (i) o impacto sobre as áreas prioritárias para a conservação depende dos critérios pelos quais elas foram definidas, assim, as áreas definidas por sua alta vulnerabilidade estão atualmente mais impactadas do que áreas de baixa vulnerabilidade. Ao longo do século XXI, o impacto geral da agricultura deve aumentar, mas a diferença entre os dois tipos de prioridades se mantém, exceto para as High Biodiversity Wilderness Areas, definidas por sua baixa vulnerabilidade, mas que nos cenários mais pessimistas podem ter um impacto agrícola semelhante ao das áreas de alta vulnerabilidade; (ii) há uma alta congruência espacial entre áreas com elevado uso agrícola no futuro e áreas prioritárias para a conservação de carnívoros; esse conflito pode ser reduzido se o processo de priorização incluir as informações sobre a expansão agrícola; a incorporação dessa informação, entretanto, provoca uma profunda alteração na distribuição das áreas prioritárias e reduz o número de populações de carnívoros protegidas; (iii) a integração entre os países para a criação de um conjunto de áreas prioritárias para conservação que represente 17% da superfície terrestre pode proteger 19% mais populações de mamíferos sem reduzir a produção de alimentos, se comparada a uma estratégia em que cada país busque proteger seu território independentemente; (iv) o impacto da agricultura no Brasil deve aumentar até o fim do século XXI, ameaçando inclusive as áreas protegidas e o seu entorno. Esse impacto, porém, não deve ser diferente entre as áreas de uso sustentável e aquelas de proteção integral. Assim, a expansão agrícola deve continuar a ser uma importante ameaça à biodiversidade no futuro, atingindo inclusive áreas de especial interesse para a conservação. As ações de conservação devem ser planejadas levando em consideração essa ameaça, a fim de reduzir seus impactos potenciais. Para isso, países como o Brasil devem reforçar sua vigilância sobre a expansão agrícola e a maneira como essa atividade é desenvolvida. Além disso, a integração internacional dos esforços de conservação deve ser buscada, dados seus benefícios para a biodiversidade e para a produção de alimentos. E por fim, a humanidade deve optar por formas de produção agrícola que reduzam seus impactos, inclusive evitando sua expansão futura, mas que possam satisfazer as necessidades da população humana globalmente. Agriculture is the human activity with the greatest impact on the environment. Specifically, it represents the greatest threat to biodiversity. In the future, this activity should expand due to population growth, increased consumption and production of biofuels from food. To understand the possible impacts of this expansion on biodiversity, we used scenarios of land use change between 1970 and 2100 from IMAGE (Integrated Model to Access Global Environment) to test the following hypotheses: (i) areas considered as global priorities for conservation by international NGOs will be preferentially impacted by agricultural expansion in the XXI century, (ii) there is a conflict between the priority areas for carnivores conservation and agricultural expansion, and this conflict can be reduced by incorporating information on agricultural expansion in the prioritization process, (iii) the integration among countries for conservation planning may benefit both biodiversity and agricultural productivity, (iv) Brazilian protected areas will be impacted by agricultural expansion in the future and this impact will differ between protected areas of integral protection and those of sustainable use. We found that: (i) the impact on priority areas for conservation depends on the criteria by which they were set, so that areas defined by its high vulnerability are currently most affected than those of low vulnerability. Throughout the XXI century this impact is expected to increase, although the difference between the two types of priorities remains, except for High Biodiversity Wilderness Areas, defined by their low vulnerability in current time, but for which most pessimistic scenarios forecast an impact similar to priority areas of high vulnerability, (ii) there is a high spatial congruence between areas with high agricultural use in the future and priority areas for conservation of carnivores. This conflict can be reduced if the prioritization process include information on agricultural expansion; this incorporation, however, causes a profound change in the distribution of priority areas and reduces the number of protected carnivore populations, (iii) the integration of countries to create a set of priority areas for conservation that represents 17% of the land surface can protect 19% more mammal populations without reducing food production, compared to a strategy in which each country seeks to protect its territory independently, and (iv) the impact of agriculture in Brazil is expected to increase until the end of the century, threatening even the protected areas and their surroundings. This impact, however, should not be different between areas of sustainable use and those of integral protection. We conclude that agricultural expansion should remain a major threat to biodiversity in the future, even in areas of special interest for conservation. Conservation actions should be planned taking into account this threat in order to reduce their potential impacts. For this, countries like Brazil should strengthen its surveillance on agricultural expansion and on how this activity is developed. Furthermore, the integration of international conservation efforts should be pursued, given its benefits for biodiversity and food production. Finally, humanity must choose methods of agricultural production that reduce its impacts, including avoiding its future expansion, so as to meet the increasing needs of a human population globally.

Species' geographic ranges are usually considered as basic units in macroecology and biogeography, yet it is still difficult to measure them accurately for many reasons. About 20 years ago, researchers started using local data on species' occurrences to estimate broad scale ranges, thereby establishing the niche modeling approach. However, there are still many problems in model evaluation and application, and one of the solutions is to find a consensus solution among models derived from different mathematical and statistical models for niche modeling, climatic projections and variable combination, all of which are sources of uncertainty during niche modeling. In this paper, we discuss this approach of ensemble forecasting and propose that it can be divided into three phases with increasing levels of complexity. Phase I is the simple combination of maps to achieve a consensual and hopefully conservative solution. In Phase II, differences among the maps used are described by multivariate analyses, and Phase III consists of the quantitative evaluation of the relative magnitude of uncertainties from different sources and their mapping. To illustrate these developments, we analyzed the occurrence data of the tiger moth, Utetheisa ornatrix (Lepidoptera, Arctiidae), a Neotropical moth species, and modeled its geographic range in current and future climates. A distribuição geográfica das espécies tem sido considerada como a unidade básica em macroecologia e biogeografia, mas ainda há dificuldades em mensurá-la de forma adequada, por diferentes razões. Há cerca de 20 anos atrás, os pesquisadores começaram a utilizar dados locais da ocorrência das espécies para estimar essas distribuições utilizando modelos de nicho ecológico. Entretanto, ainda há uma série de problemas na avaliação dos modelos e em suas aplicações, e uma das soluções é utilizar um consenso de diferentes modelos, projeções climáticas, cenários de emissão e combinação de variáveis, que são fontes de incerteza durante o processo de modelagem de nicho. Neste artigo nós discutimos essa abordagem de consenso e a dividimos em três fases, com níveis crescentes de complexidade. A Fase I é simplesmente a combinação de mapas e a obtenção e interpretação de um único mapa de consenso. A Fase II envolve a descrição das diferenças entre os mapas utilizando técnicas de análise multidimensional, enquanto que a Fase III consiste em analisar quantitativamente e mapear a magnitude relativa das diferentes fontes de incerteza. A fim de ilustrar essa abordagem, nós analisamos dados de ocorrência de Utetheisa ornatrix (Lepidoptera, Arctiidae), uma mariposa distribuída na região Neotropical, modelando sua distribuição geográfica com base em dados climáticos atuais e projeções de mudança climática.