O que está perdido está perdido: revelando a diversidade morfológica e genética perdida de Brachyteles (Primates: Atelidae)

• Processo: 23/09464-1
• Modalidade de apoio: Bolsas no Brasil - Pós-Doutorado
• Data de Início da vigência: 01 de janeiro de 2024
• Data de Término da vigência: 31 de dezembro de 2025
• Área de conhecimento: Ciências Biológicas - Zoologia - Taxonomia dos Grupos Recentes
• Pesquisador responsável: Joyce Rodrigues Do Prado
• Beneficiário: José Eduardo Serrano Villavicencio
• Instituição Sede: Museu de Zoologia (MZ). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brasil
• Vinculado ao auxílio: 22/12632-0 - Amostra velha é que conta história boa: a história evolutiva dos mamíferos da diagonal de vegetações abertas da América do Sul contada pelas coleções biológicas, AP.BTA.JP
• Assunto(s): Biogeografia Morfologia
• Palavra(s)-Chave do Pesquisador: amostras históricas | Biogeografia | Morfologia | Muriqui | Museômica | Mastozoologia, Delimitação de Espécies, Genética da Conservação

Resumo

The loss of animal diversity due to anthropogenic impacts is one of the main threats to the planet. This panorama is even more critical in highly fragmented regions like the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, which has been the target of anthropic activities that put all its biodiversity at risk. The largest primate inhabiting the Atlantic Forest, the Muriqui (genus Brachyteles), has significantly reduced its habitat, resulting in isolated populations throughout its distribution in this biome. Unfortunately, from all these lost areas, we only have a few testimonial individuals left, primarily deposited in Brazilian collections and some in international scientific collections. These historical samples have traditionally helped us to know the bygone morphological diversity of Brachyteles. Nonetheless, with new methodologies such as using ancient DNA from collection samples (museomics), we can know the genetic information left along with these populations and understand how the Atlantic Forest's fragmentation has influenced the Brachyteles' fitness. For these reasons, this project aims to: (1) characterize the morphological diversity of Brachyteles lost over the last decades (2) quantify the genomic changes within and between the two muriqui species: Brachyteles arachnoides and B. hypoxanthus on a historical scale by using Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) through the approach called "Ultra Conserved Elements (UCEs). I will use these data in phylogenetic analysis for comparing the historical DNA with those from recent populations to quantify the genomic consequences of small population size in Brachyteles. By the end of this project, I want to have generated empirical data that will help decision-makers understand the situation of these highly threatened species and that the necessary actions are taken to guarantee their subsistence.