Landscapes effects on the restructuration of rodent community and their pathogen interactions in restored areas

• Grant number: 23/10302-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: September 01, 2023
• End date: August 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Ecology - Applied Ecology
• Agreement: NSF - Dimensions of Biodiversity and BIOTA
• Principal Investigator: Leandro Reverberi Tambosi
• Grantee: Matheus Camargo Silva Mancini
• Host Institution: Centro de Engenharia, Modelagem e Ciências Sociais Aplicadas (CECS). Universidade Federal do ABC (UFABC). Ministério da Educação (Brasil). Santo André , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 22/02174-5 - Land use change, ecosystem resilience and zoonotic spillover risk, AP.R

Abstract

Land use and land cover changes are currently considered the major causes of biodiversity loss globally. These changes negatively affect the structure of biological communities, resulting in the loss of specialist species and the persistence and dominance of generalist species. These changes in community structure also affect the interactions between the organisms that compose these communities and the organisms that parasite them, with direct consequences to the ecosystem processes and functions resulting from these interactions. In this project, we propose to evaluate the effects of landscape changes resulting from forest restoration on an important ecosystem service promoted by biodiversity: the control and regulation of diseases. To reach this goal, we will sample the community of small mammals and their viral community in 18 landscapes with different levels of forest restoration distributed along the São Paulo state, in the Atlantic Forest biome. We intend 1) to evaluate how the forest restoration process affects the restructuration of the small mammals' functional diversity, and 2) to understand how this process affects the host-parasite interaction networks. To do this, we will use Bayesian models to evaluate possible cause-effect relationships between different landscape metrics (amount of forest cover, edge density, fragmentation, and connectivity) and the functional diversity of small mammals, as well the possible relationships between landscape metrics and the structure of the interaction networks analyzed. The results of this project will contribute to a better understanding of how forest restoration contributes to biodiversity recovery and their ecosystem services. (AU)