| Grant number: | 19/00648-7 |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor |
| Start date: | April 10, 2019 |
| End date: | March 30, 2020 |
| Field of knowledge: | Biological Sciences - Ecology - Applied Ecology |
| Principal Investigator: | Mauro Galetti Rodrigues |
| Grantee: | Fernando Henrique Martin Gonçalves |
| Supervisor: | Andrew Balmford |
| Host Institution: | Instituto de Biociências (IB). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Rio Claro. Rio Claro , SP, Brazil |
| Institution abroad: | University of Cambridge, England |
| Associated to the scholarship: | 17/24252-0 - Anthropogenic predictors of biodiversity response to forest fragmentation in the Atlantic forest, BP.PD |
Abstract The biodiversity crisis that threatens the planet can be considered the sixth major extinction event and understanding the relationship between changes in human pressures and the decline of mammalian species is necessary for identifying those species at highest risk, and for prioritizing the actions and policies required to combat their decline. The first aim of this proposal is to quantify the magnitude of mammals defaunation (including volant and non-volant species) when analyzed at the community level in the Atlantic forest of South America and to correlate with Global Terrestrial Human footprint (HFP). We hypothesize that levels of defaunation across the Atlantic Forest are elevated at regions with higher HFP and more defaunated regions overlap densely-settled coastal zones. The second aim of this proposal is to understand how human-made extinctions and human modification of distributions affects the frequency distributions of mammal body masses. We hypothesize that the predominant loss of large-bodied species increase the ecological downsizing effect and body size reduction at the community level. We will use contemporary distributions (Atlantic-series) versus estimated distributions in the absence of Anthropogenic impact (based in the climate niche) to identify which mammal communities are most defaunated and to correlate with HFP. We also will assess the ecological downsizing effect by quantifying extinction-driven changes in community-level mean and maximum body mass for all mammalian communities with recorded extinction events. This research will contribute for to understand the effects of human-made disturbances, on mammal persistence and abundance is one of the regions with the highest diversity and endemism of mammals in the world. (AU) | |
| News published in Agência FAPESP Newsletter about the scholarship: | |
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