| Grant number: | 13/50421-2 |
| Support Opportunities: | Regular Research Grants |
| Start date: | January 01, 2014 |
| End date: | March 31, 2018 |
| Field of knowledge: | Biological Sciences - Ecology |
| Agreement: | AKA |
| Principal Investigator: | Milton Cezar Ribeiro |
| Grantee: | Milton Cezar Ribeiro |
| Principal researcher abroad: | Otso Ovaskainen |
| Institution abroad: | University of Helsinki , Finland |
| Host Institution: | Instituto de Biociências (IB). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Rio Claro. Rio Claro , SP, Brazil |
| City of the host institution: | Rio Claro |
Abstract
A key challenge for ecological research is to understand the interactions between biotic and abiotic factors affecting the spatio-temporal dynamics of individuais, populations, species and communities. A profound understanding of fundamental ecology, together with robust and cost-effective methods of large-scale and long-term biodiversity monitoring, forms the basis for more applied research, such as the evaluation of the consequences of environmental change. Studies on biodiversity hotspots such as Brazilian tropical forests are especrally relevant in the context of global environmental change and biodiversity loss. Untangling complex interactions among biotic and abiotic factors requires multidisciplinary studies, with strong knowledge of natural history, well-designed sampling schemes, and efficient analytical skills.The ability to track and monitor wildlife populations has greatly increased and numerous types of sensors are currently available for ecological studies. These technical developments have enabled a significant increase in the amount and accuracy of data, but simultaneously they pose new challenges in the processing and analysis of the data. One example of such opportunities and challenges, relevant in the context I of this project, is the use of autonomous recording units to collect audio data on communities of vocal animais, such I as birds. With the advent of appropriate recording units, the major challenges for large scale sampling are no longer related to data collection but to data processing, i.e. identifying individuais or species from their vocalizations and using statistical tools to extract biologically relevant information from the data. Another example is the use of a variety of tags that track continuously the movements and behaviours of individuais, such as small GPS tags grids of digital radio telemetry data-Ioggers, and harmonic radar technology that allows one to map the movements of insects in a continuous fashion.We plan to develop a multidisciplinary approach to study tropical biodiversity in two main Brazilian ecosystems: Amazon and Atlantic forests. The main novelty of this plan is in the use of new sampling technologies combined with the development of novel theoretical and statistical frameworks for obtaining robust inference at the levels of individuais, populations and communities. We will integrate movement ecology to the fields of spatial population ecology and community ecology in general, to produce new information on tropical biodiversity, including both basic and applied aspects. (AU)
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