Climate change and Amazonian sociobiodiversity: perspectives from the herpetofauna

• Grant number: 22/10357-2
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Duration: February 01, 2023 - January 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Ecology
• Convênio/Acordo: CONFAP - National Council of State Research Support Foundations
• Principal Investigator: Tiana Kohlsdorf
• Grantee: Tiana Kohlsdorf
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (FFCLRP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Ribeirão Preto , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Adrian Antonio Garda ; Adriana Malvasio ; Daniel Oliveira Mesquita ; Fabricius Maia Chaves Bicalho Domingos ; Fernanda da Rocha Brando ; Fernanda de Pinho Werneck ; Guarino Rinaldi Colli ; Thiago Costa Gonçalves Portelinha

Abstract

This proposal adopts the Amazonian herpetofauna as a reference for biodiversity, and implements integrative and innovative eco-evolutionary and socio-environmental approaches to understand and mitigate the impacts of global climate change on Amazonian species and human populations. The proposal establishes interactions with people living along the Amazon rivers (comunidades ribeirinhas), and establishes four objectives with specific goals: 1) develop and apply a tool for discourse analysis to evaluate the perception of riverside villagers about the relationship between biodiversity and climate and its historical and contemporary changes in riverside villages (applied to traditional communities of the Rio Negro and Araguaia basins, where the research team already has established points of articulation and support); 2) strengthen and expand practices for monitoring and managing Amazonian chelonian nests and eggs carried out in these riverside villages and evaluate the nests thermal quality and the impacts of temperature increases on the phenotypic and genetic expression of Amazonian chelonian hatchlings and on the sustainable management practices that traditional communities develop, such as Community Based Tourism; 3) collect and analyze data from Amazonian amphibians and reptiles along wide environmental gradients to carry out predictive modeling of climate change impacts on the biodiversity, with an innovative approach that integrates ecology, functional phenotypes, genetics and information on reproduction and development (and thus transpose the knowledge acquired in objective 2 for the wide regional scale of the Amazon and transition zones); 4) from the discourse analysis of goal 1, develop products of public engagement with science involving the results obtained in goals 2 and 3 with villages and riverside communities involved in the proposal and sectors involved in decision-making and public policies in conservation, establishing a model to transfer scientific knowledge to local communities that can be applied in different localities in the Amazon region. (AU)