Influence of landscape and socio-economic factors on mammal distributions

• Grant number: 25/04491-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: May 01, 2025
• End date: December 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Ecology
• Agreement: Global Environment Facility (GEF)
• Principal Investigator: Milton Cezar Ribeiro
• Grantee: Milena Ramos dos Santos Baumgartner
• 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

The assemblage of medium and large mammals has a great influence on the functioning of ecosystems. As well, its richness and abundance has a direct influence on several ecosystem interactions and services. Due to the high complexity of interactions in which mammals participate, the effects of their defaunation are not fully understood. The main threats to medium and large mammals in the Atlantic Forest are habitat reduction due to forest loss, followed by fragmentation and environmental degradation. To reverse the environmental devastation scenario, some initiatives have been successfully carried out, but information on the impact of these actions on the assemblage of medium and large mammals is still scarce. Therefore,the objective of this project is to quantify the relative contribution of landscape structure and PES initiatives on a large-sized mammal distribution, using camera traps and analysis of space-time trajectories as a measure of landscape complexity, not only for natural vegetation patches, but also for matrices. Finally, we will relate biodiversity to landscape spatial-temporal structure and composition by fitting a set of candidate occupancy models, which will be selected using an information criterion method. (AU)