Integrating Biogeography and Phylogenetics to understand the distribution of bird diversity in the Atlantic Forest

• Grant number: 23/18104-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Effective date (Start): March 01, 2024
• Effective date (End): August 31, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Ecology - Theoretical Ecology
• Principal Investigator: Fernando Rodrigues da Silva
• Grantee: Anna Elizabeth de Oliveira Silva
• Supervisor: Alexandre Marcos Antonelli
• Host Institution: Centro de Ciências e Tecnologias para a Sustentabilidade (CCTS). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). Sorocaba , SP, Brazil
• Research place: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, England
• Associated to the scholarship: 23/01803-1 - Influence of historical and contemporary factors on the biogeographical regionalization of Atlantic Forest birds, BP.MS

Abstract

Biogeographic regionalization is typically defined as a hierarchical system that categorizes geographical areas based on their shared biological compositions. This approach provides spatial representations of species' geographic distribution in response to past and current abiotic and biotic forces, contributing to understanding how speciation, extinction, and dispersal processes have shaped those patterns over evolutionary history. In my MS project (2023/01803-1), I am analyzing the relative importance of present-day climate heterogeneity, past climate change, orographic barriers, riverine barriers, and vegetation structure on the biogeographical regionalization of Atlantic Forest birds, using a taxonomic approach to delineate bioregions. However, since molecular-based species-level phylogenies have become increasingly accessible, phylogenetic regionalization has stood out as a valuable tool for elucidating biota's spatial and temporal evolution in a region. This method estimates ancestral distribution areas, providing a more robust demarcation of biogeographic units grounded in historical relationships and enabling comparisons of diversification rates for a particular lineage. Considering those aspects, I hypothesize that adding a phylogenetic regionalization analysis to the results would help reveal the spatial and evolutionary structure of bird diversity along the Atlantic Forest. This integrative framework could provide novel insights into the processes that generate, distribute, and shape these patterns within the domain. Therefore, it represents improvements in the applicability of those studies for biodiversity conservation practices, especially for biological groups that stand out because of their expressive numbers in terms of diversity and endemism.