Assessing the direct and indirect potential impacts of urbanization on Atlantic Forest bird and mammal communities

• Grant number: 25/00227-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: March 01, 2025
• End date: February 28, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Ecology - Ecosystems Ecology
• Principal Investigator: João Carlos de Castro Pena
• Grantee: Mariana Corrêa Azevedo
• Host Institution: Centro de Estudos Ambientais (CEA). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Rio Claro. Rio Claro , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 23/17971-0 - Ecological approaches to assess patterns of biodiversity and ecosystem services delivery in urban landscapes, AP.JP

Abstract

Urbanization causes profound impacts on biodiversity. Direct impacts, such as habitat loss and noise and air pollution are known to lead to alterations on all biodiversity dimensions (taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic). Thus, highly urbanized areas are generally inhabited by a reduced number of phylogenetically closely related species sharing generalist traits. However, several urbanization related impacts surpass the boundaries of cities (indirect impacts), leading to negative consequences on organisms inhabiting vegetation patches kilometers away from the nearest urban landscape. Illegal logging and poaching and air and noise pollution may be influenced by the presence of urbanized areas and affect biological communities. Furthermore, urban landscapes offer unique conditions to organisms inhabiting cities, what may lead to intraspecific morphological trait variation among individuals inhabiting regions under influences of different urbanization intensities. Currently, approximately 70% of the Brazilian human population lives within the boundaries of the Atlantic Forest biome, a biodiversity hotspot. As the population grows, the larger the urban landscapes will become, enhancing the impacts of the urbanization process on the already threatened biodiversity. However, little is known about how the indirect impacts of urbanization may influence the different dimensions of biodiversity across the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Furthermore, there is a large knowledge gap regarding the influences of urbanization on intraspecific trait variation. Therefore, this project aims at filling these gaps by assessing the direct and indirect potential impacts of urbanization on bird and mammal communities of the Atlantic Forest. We will use thousands of georeferenced records about bird and mammal communities available in the published literature (i.e. Atlantic collection from the journal Ecology). Using public geospatial data on urbanization and human infrastructure across the Atlantic Forest, we will produce surfaces describing the direct and indirect impacts of urbanization across the biome. We will apply modeling approaches to assess the relationships between metrics describing the intensity of urbanization and the different biodiversity dimensions of the biological communities. We will also assess if the level of urbanization can describe intraspecific trait variation among individuals. We expect that, at the community level, highly urbanized areas to be inhabited by phylogenetic closely related species sharing generalist trats, for example, a smaller proportion of forest species and a higher proportion of omnivorous species. Furthermore, we expect conspecific individuals in highly urbanized areas to present different morphological traits from those from more preserved areas describing adaptative strategies to cope with the urbanization environmental challenges. We expect to provide important insights on how to plan the preservation, the occupation, and the restoration of areas of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest under an urban ecology perspective, reducing the impacts of the urbanization process on this biodiversity hotspot.