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Encounters between flowers and invertebrates are key events for the functioning of tropical forests. Assessing the structure of networks composed by the interactions between those partners enables a better understanding of ecosystem functioning and the effects of environmental factors over ecological processes. Gathering such data is, however, costly and time-consuming, especially in the highly diverse tropics. We aimed to provide a comprehensive repository of the available flower-invertebrate interactions information for the Atlantic Forest, a South American tropical forest domain. Data were obtained from published works and "grey literature", such as theses and dissertations, as well as self-reports by co-authors. The data set has ~18 thousand interaction records forming 482 networks, each containing from 1 to 1,061 interaction links. Each network was sampled for about 200 hours or less, with few exceptions. A total of 641 plant genera within 136 different families and 39 orders were reported, with the most abundant and rich families being Asteraceae, Fabaceae and Rubiaceae. Invertebrates interacting with these plants were all arthropods from 10 orders, 129 families and 581 genera, comprising 2,419 morphotypes (including 988 named species). Hymenoptera was the most abundant and diverse order with at least six times more records than the second-ranked order (Lepidoptera). The complete data set shows Hymenoptera interacting with all plant orders, also depicting Diptera, Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, and Hemiptera as important nodes. Among plants, Asterales and Fabales had the highest number of interactions. The best sampled environment was forest (~8,000 records), followed by pastures and crops. Savanna, grasslands and urban environments (among others) were also reported, indicating a wide range of approaches dedicated to collect flower-invertebrate data in the Atlantic Forest domain. Nevertheless, most reported data were from forest understory or lower strata, indicating a knowledge gap about flower-invertebrate interactions at the canopy. Also, access to remote regions is still a limitation, generating sampling bias across the geographical range of the Atlantic Forest. Future studies in these continuous and hard to access forested areas shall bring important new information regarding the interactions between flowers and invertebrates at the Atlantic Forest. There are no copyright restrictions on the data set. Please cite this data paper if the data are used in publications and teaching events.

10 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, supplementary information https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.160822.-- Code availability: The bioinformatics pipeline and statistical analysis are available at https://github.com/MeirellesLab/aquifer_metagenomes.-- Data availability: I have shared the link to the data/codes within the manuscript file, Aquifers have significant social, economic, and ecological importance. They supply 30 % of the freshwater for human consumption worldwide, including agricultural and industrial use. Despite aquifers' importance, the relationships between aquifer categories and their inhabiting microbial communities are still unknown. Characterizing variations within microbial communities' function and taxonomy structure at different aquifers could give a panoramic view of patterns that may enable the detection and prediction of environmental impact caused by multiple sources. Using publicly available shotgun metagenomic datasets, we examined whether soil properties, land use, and climate variables would have a more significant influence on the taxonomy and functional structure of the microbial communities than the ecological landscapes of the aquifer (i.e., Karst, Porous, Saline, Geyser, and Porous Contaminated). We found that these categories are stronger predictors of microbial communities' structure than geographical localization. In addition, our results show that microbial richness and dominance patterns are the opposite of those found in multicellular life, where extreme habitats harbour richer functional and taxonomic microbial communities. We found that low-abundant and recently described candidate taxa, such as the chemolithoautotrophic genus Candidatus Altiarcheum and the Candidate phylum Parcubacteria, are the main contributors to aquifer microbial communities' dissimilarities. Genes related to gram-negative bacteria proteins, cell wall structures, and phage activity were the primary contributors to aquifer microbial communities' dissimilarities among the aquifers' ecological landscapes. The results reported in the present study highlight the utility of using ecological landscapes for investigating aquifer microbial communities. In addition, we suggest that functions played by recently described and low abundant bacterial groups need further investigation once they might affect water quality, geochemical cycles, and the effects of anthropogenic disturbances such as pollution and climatic events on aquifers, This work was primarily supported by the PROPESQ-UFBA (11268). FASB was supported by Programa Institucional de Bolsas de Iniciação Científica and Fundação de Amparo a Pesquisa da Bahia (4102/2019); CMF was supported by CAPES (88887-468244-2019-00). PMM thanks Serrapilheira Institute (grant number Serra-1709-17818). [...] FHC was supported by a Juan de la Cierva - Incoporación fellowship (Grant IJC2019-039859-I), With the institutional support of the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S)

As large amounts of natural environments are lost due to urbanization, the role of remnant native vegetation in the preservation of biodiversity has become even more significant. Remnant native forest patches are essential refugia for flora and fauna and are crucial for the maintenance of ecosystem processes in urbanized landscapes. We evaluated the influence of landscape structure on ants and spiders associated with Atlantic Forest remnants in urban landscapes. We sampled 14 forest areas in the Metropolitan Region of Salvador and tested the effect of the landscapes' proportion of forest cover, mean landscape isolation, and mean landscape shape complexity on the taxonomic and functional richness and the community composition of both groups. The species collected were classified into functional groups based on behavioral attributes and environmental preferences. Overall, there were strong adverse effects of forest loss, decreased connectivity, and an increase in edge effects associated with the mean shape complexity of the forest remnants. However, the spiders responded to all three landscape structure characteristics whereas the ants only responded to the landscape mean shape complexity. Our findings indicate that the maintenance of urban forest habitats is essential for the conservation of biodiversity in the Metropolitan Region of Salvador and the preservation of ecological functions performed by species within the forest areas.

The role of agriculture as a menace or a contribution to the maintenance of the biodiversity and ecosystems function (such as pollination) in heterogeneous landscapes is critical to the balance in the tradeoff relationships between food production and biodiversity. Recent studies suggested that the role of agriculture to the maintenance of biodiversity can be context dependent. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the interplay between the proportion of agriculture and landscape heterogeneity on the maintenance of pollinators richness and abundance, and plant-pollinators interactions in agro-natural landscapes. Plant-pollinator surveys were conducted in seminatural areas near agricultural areas in 22 landscapes in the agricultural pole of Chapada Diamantina, Bahia, Brazil. By a combination of PCA and clustering analysis the landscapes were divided into two groups characterized by the inverse correlation of proportion of agriculture and heterogeneity. The first group had low proportion of agriculture and high landscape diversity and the second group had high proportion of agriculture and low landscape diversity. Using linear models, we investigated the differences in plant-pollinator networks structure between these two landscape groups and its relationship with the proportion of agriculture. Our results showed that there is a positive relationship between the plant-pollinator networks number of links, the pollinator species richness and native pollinators abundance with the proportion of agriculture in the landscapes. However, the most heterogeneous landscapes, with smaller proportions of agriculture have networks with more links, higher pollinator species richness and native pollinators abundance than more homogenous landscapes with greater proportions of agriculture. In this sense, even if agricultural areas can favor some pollinators, there are evident losses of pollinator diversity and plant-pollinator interactions associated with the landscape homogenization.

Pollinators are threatened all over the planet; scientific data about the status of them is essential for planning conservation and impact mitigation. Appropriate methods and costs for monitoring are being discussed and non-scientist participation in data collection in citizen science (CS) projects is a very promising option. However, there is criticism regarding the quality of data gathered by non-scientists and their real contribution to scientific research, which makes the engagement of scientists in these projects crucial for data verification and validation and training volunteers. CS is still poorly spread in Latin America, so in order to propose strategies to engage scientists, it is necessary to understand the attitude of these professionals towards CS and their interests in engaging in it. To this end, we conducted a survey with 96 biodiversity scientists based in five Latin American countries. In general, the respondents have a very favorable attitude towards CS, although only a small percentage of them are engaged in CS projects. Obtaining data for scientific research is the scientists’ main interest in CS, although some of them have also expressed more altruistic reasons for engaging in CS related to ethical and social values. Our paper also suggests five interrelated strategies that can be taken to engage scientists in CS, covering the following: (a) create funding lines to support projects, (b) include extension and outreach activities in the system of scientists’ evaluation, (c) promote an inter and transdisciplinary infrastructure, (d) promote scientists’ building capacities in CS, and (e) encourage scientists to do science communication.

Contains fulltext : 218139.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Studies in microbiology have long been mostly restricted to small spatial scales. However, recent technological advances, such as new sequencing methodologies, have ushered an era of large-scale sequencing of environmental DNA data from multiple biomes worldwide. These global datasets can now be used to explore long standing questions of microbial ecology. New methodological approaches and concepts are being developed to study such large-scale patterns in microbial communities, resulting in new perspectives that represent a significant advances for both microbiology and macroecology. Here, we identify and review important conceptual, computational, and methodological challenges and opportunities in microbial macroecology. Specifically, we discuss the challenges of handling and analyzing large amounts of microbiome data to understand taxa distribution and co-occurrence patterns. We also discuss approaches for modeling microbial communities based on environmental data, including information on biological interactions to make full use of available Big Data. Finally, we summarize the methods presented in a general approach aimed to aid microbiologists in addressing fundamental questions in microbial macroecology, including classical propositions (such as "everything is everywhere, but the environment selects") as well as applied ecological problems, such as those posed by human induced global environmental changes.

The global initiatives of monitoring and conserving pollinators require worldwide assessments with comparable data sets collected through standardized methods. The use of pan traps is a passive method widely applied to sample flower visitors, standing out for its simplicity. Despite its wide use to sample pollinator diversity, the influence of color on trap efficiency is not well understood. The available studies are particularly scarce in the tropics and have generated divergent results. The main goal of the present study was to assess whether blue, yellow and white pan traps are complementary to sample Hymenoptera community. For this, we placed 49 sample units of blue, white and yellow pan traps in agricultural and natural (savanna-like) areas in Chapada Diamantina, Bahia, Brazil. We found that the species richness from blue and yellow pan traps were not significantly different, but both were significantly greater than the species richness from white pan traps. However, bees were significantly more attracted to the blue pan traps and wasps to the yellow ones; thus, color attractiveness was group-specific. Pan traps of different color showed low species composition overlap with 61 % of species collected exclusively in one of the three pan trap colors, and the species composition in the blue traps differed consistently from that in the traps of the other colors. In the article we discuss the implication of the results and defend the combined use of pan traps with different colors as a solution for the differential variable sample bias.

Earth has an extremely dynamic surface which changes naturally across time. In the last century, however, vegetation cover underwent severe modifications due to human demands for natural resources and food production. These changes are deeply modifying the spatial distribution of native environments, which exist today mostly in small patches embedded in human dominated landscapes. This is even harsher in the tropics, where agricultural expansion is more intense. Ecologically, this means that native species have to cope with a heterogeneous set of new environments in which they did not evolve, bringing difficulties for the movement of foraging individuals. This can impair the encounters needed to establish biological interactions among individuals and different species. In this chapter, we explore how landscape changes can lead to variations in ecological networks structure and its consequences for biological and ecosystem services conservation. Although there is a general lack of complete and extensive studies regarding the effects of landscape changes on tropical ecological networks, there is growing evidence that, given a certain native vegetation cover, landscape heterogeneity may favor bigger and more complex networks across scales or ecological hierarchical levels. The relationship between landscape heterogeneity and the structure of ecological networks is however still an open field with many challenges and opportunities and a huge potential for application for conservation and environmental management.

The fauna of Euglossini bees is poorly known in savanna regions, making it difficult to understand how these bees use open vegetation environments. The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of landscape structure on species abundance and composition of Euglossini bees in naturally heterogeneous savanna landscapes. Nine sites were sampled monthly using six traps with chemical baits. Three aromatic essences (eucalyptol, methyl salicylate and vanillin) were used to attract the Euglossini. Surrounding environmental conditions were measured using three independent variables, calculated in multiple scales: index of local vegetation and two landscape indices (Shannon Diversity and area-weighted shape). We compared the competing hypotheses through model selection based on Second-order Akaike Information Criterion (AICc). The four competing hypothesis were: (1) The local vegetation complexity favors Euglossini bees species richness and/or abundance (local vegetation hypothesis); (2) The proportion of the native vegetation types favors Euglossini bees species richness and/or abundance (habitat amount hypothesis); (3) Higher landscape diversity shall increase species richness of Euglossini bees (landscape heterogeneity hypothesis); (4) More complex landscape configuration shall favor the Euglossini bees richness and/or abundance (landscape heterogeneity hypothesis). We sampled 647 individuals belonging to six species of two distinct genera. Our results support the habitat amount hypothesis since bees’ abundance was strongly related with the proportion of habitat in the surrounding landscape. This may be related to the availability of floral and nesting resources in some types of savanna vegetation. Resumo A fauna das abelhas da tribo Euglossini é pouco conhecida em regiões de savana, tornando difícil a compreensão de como essas abelhas usam ambientes com vegetação aberta. O objetivo desse estudo foi avaliar a influência da estrutura da paisagem na abundância e composição de espécies de abelhas Euglossini em paisagens naturalmente heterogêneas de savana. Nove locais foram amostrados mensalmente utilizando seis armadilhas com iscas químicas. As essências eucaliptol, salicilato de metila e vanilina foram utilizadas para atrair os machos de Euglossini. As condições ambientais foram medidas usando três variáveis, calculadas em múltiplas escalas: índice de vegetação local e dois índices de paisagem (diversidade de Shannon e o índice de forma ponderado pela área). Através da seleção de modelos baseada no critério de informação de Akaike de segunda ordem (AICc) comparamos as hipóteses alternativas: (1) Vegetação local mais complexa favorece as abelhas Euglossini (hipótese da vegetação local); (2) A proporção dos tipos de vegetação nativas favorece as abelhas Euglossini (hipótese da quantidade habitat); (3) A diversidade da paisagem favorece a riqueza de espécies de abelhas Euglossini (hipótese da heterogeneidade da paisagem); (4) Configuração mais complexa da paisagem favorece a riqueza e/ou abundância de abelhas Euglossini (hipótese da heterogeneidade paisagem). Nós amostramos 647 indivíduos pertencentes a seis espécies de dois gêneros distintos. Nossos resultados apoiam a hipótese de quantidade de habitat já que a abundância das abelhas foi fortemente relacionada com a proporção de habitat nas paisagens circundantes. Esses resultados podem estar relacionados com a disponibilidade de recursos florais e substratos para nidificação em alguns tipos de savana.

Mutualistic plant-pollinator interactions play a key role in biodiversity conservation and ecosystem functioning. In a community, the combination of these interactions can generate emergent properties, e.g., robustness and resilience to disturbances such as fluctuations in populations and extinctions. Given that these systems are hierarchical and complex, environmental changes must have multiple levels of influence. In addition, changes in habitat quality and in the landscape structure are important threats to plants, pollinators and their interactions. However, despite the importance of these phenomena for the understanding of biological systems, as well as for conservation and management strategies, few studies have empirically evaluated these effects at the network level. Therefore, the objective of this study was to investigate the influence of local conditions and landscape structure at multiple scales on the characteristics of plant-pollinator networks. This study was conducted in agri-natural lands in Chapada Diamantina, Bahia, Brazil. Pollinators were collected in 27 sampling units distributed orthogonally along a gradient of proportion of agriculture and landscape diversity. The Akaike information criterion was used to select models that best fit the metrics for network characteristics, comparing four hypotheses represented by a set of a priori candidate models with specific combinations of the proportion of agriculture, the average shape of the landscape elements, the diversity of the landscape and the structure of local vegetation. The results indicate that a reduction of habitat quality and landscape heterogeneity can cause species loss and decrease of networks nestedness. These structural changes can reduce robustness and resilience of plant-pollinator networks what compromises the reproductive success of plants, the maintenance of biodiversity and the pollination service stability. We also discuss the possible explanations for these relationships and the implications for landscape planning in agricultural areas.