Influence of native vegetation proportion and landscape heterogeneity on mammal species richness in the Upper Paranapanema

• Grant number: 25/20980-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: December 01, 2025
• End date: November 30, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Ecology - Ecosystems Ecology
• Principal Investigator: Alexandre Camargo Martensen
• Grantee: Julia Caldeira de Souza
• Host Institution: Centro de Ciências da Natureza (CCN). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). Campus de Lagoa do Sino. Buri , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The destruction of natural ecosystems is one of the main causes of biodiversitydecline. This process brings to the division of habitat into small, isolated fragments,exacerbated by the land use intensification, which homogenizes landscapes and restrictsremaining native vegetation to areas of low-agricultural potential. Although this phenomenonis recognized, there are still gaps in understanding how these impacts affect speciespersistence, especially in tropical forests. In this way, this study aims to analyze the influenceof the proportion of native vegetation and landscape heterogeneity on the richness of mediumand large-sized mammals in the Upper Paranapanema Basin, using environmental DNAsampling. Eighteen sites were selected, ranging from 0 to 80% native vegetation and withvariable levels of heterogeneity. DNA collections and extractions were previously conductedas part of a postdoctoral project focused on fish. Species will be identified by amplificationwith the MiFish-U primer. If this is ineffective, amplification will be repeated with theMammal 16S F/16S R primer. The sequences obtained will be processed throughbioinformatics analysis to identify Operational Taxonomic Units and compared to opendatabases for species identification. Regression models will be used to assess the influence oflandscape variables on mammal richness, and these models will be selected using the AkaikeInformation Criteria (AIC). Understanding these effects will help inform mammalconservation strategies in fragmented landscapes suffering from the homogenization processof land use intensification. (AU)