Evaluation of biological diversity and habitat quality between areas with different types of anthropogenic intervention using bioindicator insects

• Grant number: 23/02267-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: February 01, 2025
• End date: January 31, 2028
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Ecology
• Principal Investigator: Milton Cezar Ribeiro
• Grantee: Patrícia Eyng Gueratto
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências (IB). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Rio Claro. Rio Claro , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 21/10195-0 - Contribution of payment for ecosystem services on multi-dimensions within Atlantic Forest, AP.TEM

Abstract

Biological diversity is associated with essential ecosystem services, so its decline joined with climate change may compromise the ecosystem benefits to the human population. Given this current scenario, it became urgent conservation actions that aimed to restore habitats and transform land use management to recover ecologically sustainable and multifunctional landscapes. Several initiatives have been proposed in recent decades around the world, such as the "Conexão Mata Atlântica" project, created with the aim of preserving ecosystem services associated with water and biodiversity conservation and carbon capture in priority areas of the Rio Basin Paraiba do Sul (BRPS). However, such initiatives have rarely been systematically quantified, and there is a lack of assessments of the possible effects of climate change on their effectiveness. With this in mind, the main objective of this project is to compare biological diversity between areas that joined the "Conexão Mata Atlântica" project with areas that did not and provide information on the effectiveness of the project in terms of contribution to the restoration of the biodiversity and ecological and ecosystem functions. Three groups of insects (ants, beetles and butterflies) will be used as indicators, in current and climate change scenarios, in addition to proposing strategies for land use and management throughout the BRPS area. For this, the following specific objectives are proposed: a. Compare taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity between different areas, with different types of interventions; b. Investigate the relation of landscape attributes with diversity indices; c. Investigate the effect of climate change on diversity patterns, through niche models; and d. Identify priority areas for implementing actions related to conservation, forest restoration, or sustainable land use systems. Areas in "Protection Areas", which will serve as a control, properties that received incentives from different strategies (such as Payment for Environmental Services, CVS, and CERT support), and properties that did not apply any strategy of the "Conexão Mata Atlântica" project will be sampled. Different types of environments will be compared through different indices of taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity, the role of landscape variables in the spatial distribution of diversity will be investigated, and niche models will be built based on climatic (present and future) and landscape variables. In this way, this project aims to expand ecological knowledge about the distribution of diversity, but it also has a strong applied bias, once its results are relevant to rural producers and decision-makers.