The researchers modeled the distributions of 490 native bee species across the biome, which encompasses eastern Brazil and portions of eastern Paraguay and northeastern Argentina. They ultimately retained 466 species whose models met a Sorensen performance threshold of 0.7 or higher. Species with at least 15 occurrences were modeled using an ensemble of eight distribution algorithms, species with five to 14 occurrences were assessed with ensembles of small models, and distributions for species with two to four occurrences were estimated from environmental similarity within 50 km of occurrence records.

The occurrence data began with 240,062 records associated with 770 species names. After taxonomic corrections and selection of species native to the study area, the list included 564 species; 74 species represented by only one occurrence were removed before distribution modeling. Spatial cleaning removed invalid or duplicate coordinates, records georeferenced to administrative centroids and occurrences outside the documented natural distribution, reducing the dataset to 16,542 records. Environmental filtering to reduce sampling bias retained 11,404 occurrences.

Models were built from 1-km bioclimatic and elevation data that were resampled to 5 km. Principal components explaining 95% of the original environmental variation were used as predictors, with four components applied to 282 species, five to 206 species and six to two species. The richness map was created by stacking semi-binary models in which suitability below a threshold was assigned zero and values above the threshold remained continuous. Predictions were limited to a 100-km buffer around a minimum convex polygon enclosing each species’ presence records.

The resulting map placed the highest estimated richness, above 75 species per 5-km cell, in the southwestern and southern parts of the Atlantic Forest, including mountainous portions of the Serra do Mar Coastal Forests, eastern Araucaria Moist Forest and southern Upper Paraná Atlantic Forest. Estimated richness was lower in the northeastern coastal strip, where Pernambuco Coastal Forests contained 25 to 50 species per cell, and in drier interior areas of the Caatinga and Bahia Inland Forests, where values fell below 25 species. These are modeled richness estimates rather than direct counts from standardized field surveys.

Poisson generalized linear models related richness to four environmental measures: temperature seasonality, topographic heterogeneity, geomorphic heterogeneity and stream density. Spatial eigenvector filters were used to account for residual spatial autocorrelation, and roughly 2,200 cells were systematically sampled for each analysis. For the biome as a whole, temperature seasonality had a variable-importance value of 87.44, compared with 25.7 for topographic heterogeneity and 23.6 for geomorphic heterogeneity. All three were positively associated with modeled richness, while stream density had comparatively little explanatory power.

At the ecoregion scale, the strength and direction of these associations were not uniform. Temperature seasonality ranked as the most important variable in nine of the 11 ecoregions, including the Cerrado, Uruguayan Savanna and Campos Rupestres Montane Savanna. The researchers reported positive relationships in five ecoregions and negative relationships in six. Topographic heterogeneity was positively associated with richness in seven ecoregions and negatively associated in two, whereas geomorphic heterogeneity also changed direction among ecoregions. These nonstationary results indicate that a biome-wide relationship cannot be assumed to apply uniformly at the regional scale.

Notably, the Serra do Mar Coastal Forests had the highest estimated bee richness even though the environmental heterogeneity variables explained little of its richness pattern. The authors identified several possible considerations, including historical climatic stability, the quality and year-round availability of floral resources, and whether the 5-km modeling resolution was too coarse to capture finer environmental variation. These were proposed explanations rather than variables directly tested as causes of the regional pattern.

The study also examined a possible circularity because temperature seasonality was used in both the species distribution models and the community-level richness analysis. Only 27 species, or 5.8% of the modeled set, had suitability values strongly correlated with temperature seasonality, and they represented a small portion of total richness in the southwest. The authors therefore considered the potential influence of circularity to be minimal, although this check did not eliminate all limitations.

Important constraints include the difficulty of obtaining comparable occurrence records for bees across large and inaccessible areas, differences in species-specific life histories and habitat requirements, and the use of partly merged sections of the extensive Cerrado and Caatinga ecoregions. Consequently, the results should not be extrapolated to those ecoregions in full. Overall, the analysis supports temperature seasonality, terrain complexity and geomorphic diversity as factors associated with Atlantic Forest bee richness, while emphasizing that regional variation and factors not included in the models may also shape local diversity patterns.

Subject of Research: Environmental heterogeneity and modeled native bee richness across Atlantic Forest ecoregions

Article Title: Environmental heterogeneity as a determinant of bee diversity patterns in the Atlantic Forest

Article References: Antonio, A. I., Oliveira Junior, A. C. D., Villalobos, F., & Velazco, S. J. E. (2025). Environmental heterogeneity as a determinant of bee diversity patterns in the Atlantic Forest. Frontiers of Biogeography, 18, Article e142410. https://doi.org/10.21425/fob.18.142410

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.21425/fob.18.142410

Keywords: Atlantic Forest, native bees, species richness, temperature seasonality, topographic heterogeneity, geomorphic diversity, species distribution models, ecoregions, spatial modeling, biodiversity, Environmental, heterogeneity

The research was conducted at Vale Natural Reserve, a 22,711-hectare protected area between the municipalities of Linhares and Jaguaré in northern Espírito Santo. The reserve forms part of the Linhares-Sooretama Forest Block, which covers more than 53,000 hectares and represents about 11% of the forest remaining in the state. Most of Vale Natural Reserve consists of dense lowland forest on flat terrain, classified as perennial seasonal forest. The landscape also includes a locally named sandy-soil forest type called Mussununga, native grasslands, flooded swamps and areas affected by human uses. The climate is tropical with a dry winter, with a mean annual temperature of 24.3 °C and mean annual rainfall of 1,214 millimetres, although rainfall varied considerably among years.

Researchers collected data at eight ocelot latrines distributed across the reserve. These sites were identified through active searches and characterized by the repeated accumulation of feces and urine in the same location. One Bushnell Trophy Cam HD Agressor digital camera trap was installed on a tree stem facing each latrine. The cameras operated continuously for 24 hours a day from March 2018 to February 2019. At each trigger, they recorded two photographs and a 20-second video, with a 10-second interval between consecutive capture events. The design concentrated observations on sites that ocelots used for scent marking and that the source identifies as places of direct and indirect interaction within and between the sexes.

Ocelots were identified individually from their distinctive coat patterns, including spots and stripes. External sexual characteristics visible in males, together with relative body size, allowed the researchers to classify individuals by sex and age category. The records included eight adult males, 12 adult females and two cubs whose sex was not determined. Both flanks were recorded for six adult males, while only the right flank was available for two; all adult females were recorded on both flanks. Adult males appeared at every latrine, whereas females appeared at all but one. Seven of the eight latrines registered individuals of both sexes, and the two cubs were recorded at one of the eight sites.

Repeated detections at multiple latrines distinguished the spatial records of males from those of females. Six of the eight adult males were recorded at more than one latrine, and three males were each recorded at three sites, qualifying them for home-range estimation. All adult females were recorded at only one site, including the female observed with her two cubs. Males also shared latrines more frequently: the mean number of males recorded per latrine was 2.1, compared with 1.5 females, and five latrines contained more males than females. The observed adult sex ratio was 1.0 male to 1.5 females, unlike an earlier survey at the same reserve that registered more males. The authors suggested that the difference may partly reflect sampling design, because latrines are used for interactions and may have favored the recording of females, but the study did not directly establish the population’s true sex ratio.

Home-range size was estimated in two ways so the results could be compared with published studies that used different analytical approaches. The 100% minimum convex polygon, abbreviated MCP, produced estimates of 6.19 square kilometres for male Lp26, 20.76 square kilometres for Lp44 and 9.28 square kilometres for Lp65. The 95% adaptive kernel density estimator, abbreviated 95%K and calculated with a standard biweight or quartic kernel, produced respective estimates of 10.10, 10.83 and 38.92 square kilometres. The mean 95%K estimate was 1.6 times the mean MCP estimate. The 38.92-square-kilometre kernel estimate for Lp65 was also the largest individual value, showing that the range across the three males and the two methods extended from 6.19 to 38.92 square kilometres rather than being confined to the narrower interval between the smallest and largest polygon estimates.

Vale Natural Reserve’s estimates fell within the range reported for ocelots elsewhere. The source describes published home ranges across the species’ distribution as varying from 2 to 39 square kilometres and cites a meta-analysis with a species-wide mean of 17.4 ± 3.7 square kilometres and a male mean of 20.7 ± 6.1 square kilometres. Previous Atlantic Forest studies using MCP produced mean male estimates of 7.5 ± 4.8 square kilometres in Caraguatá Ecological Reserve in Santa Catarina, 13.4 ± 8.0 square kilometres in the Green Corridor of Misiones in Argentina, and 32.9 ± 10.9 square kilometres in Iguaçu National Park in Paraná. One previous study using 95%K reported a male mean of 45.2 ± 4.9 square kilometres at Iguaçu National Park. The Vale polygon estimate was near the middle of the MCP values reported for the biome, while its kernel estimate was almost half the previously reported kernel mean for male ocelots in Atlantic Forest.

Home-range estimates can vary with sex, age, population density, season, food availability and habitat conditions, but the present study did not measure all of these variables directly. The authors placed the perennial seasonal forest at Vale Natural Reserve between dense ombrophilous forest and dense subtropical semideciduous forest in a vegetation gradient, noting that the reserve’s polygon estimate was intermediate between the lower values reported for ombrophilous forest and the higher value reported for semideciduous forest. They suggested that vegetation structure could affect productivity and prey availability, with smaller ranges potentially associated with greater food availability. That interpretation was based on the reserve’s result together with published values from other sites; the study did not measure prey abundance or establish a general inverse relationship between food availability and ocelot home-range size.

Behavioral interpretations were likewise presented in the context of previous ocelot research. The broader overlap among male records and the lower overlap among female records were consistent with studies in which males occupy larger ranges, although access to females can also influence male movement. The authors cited observations that pregnant and lactating females may increase patrolling and scent marking, potentially making them less tolerant of territorial overlap with other females. Relaxed territoriality among familiar females outside breeding periods, or possible family relationships, were proposed as possible explanations for four adult females using the same latrine, including the female with cubs. These explanations were not tested directly, so they remain interpretations rather than measured causes of the observed distribution.

The study’s central contribution is a paired set of home-range estimates for three adult male ocelots in Lowland Atlantic Forest, accompanied by population and spatial records for 22 identified animals at eight latrines. Its limitations are substantial: only males appearing at more than two latrines received range estimates, the sample comprised three individuals, and the eight monitoring points did not cover the full landscape available to them. The authors therefore described the calculated areas as portions of the total ranges used by the males. Within that scope, the results show that estimates from the same three animals varied markedly with method and place Vale Natural Reserve within the range of previously published ocelot home-range measurements. They also identify latrines as effective monitoring locations for gathering information on ocelot population and spatial ecology, providing reference values for this reserve, the wider Linhares-Sooretama block and comparable lowland forest.

Subject of Research: Camera-trap estimation of male ocelot home ranges in southeastern Brazil’s Lowland Atlantic Forest

Article Title: Ocelot, Leopardus pardalis ( Mammalia , Carnivora , Felidae ), home range in the Lowland Atlantic Forest of Southeastern Brazil

Article References: Magalhães, L. M., & Srbek-Araujo, A. C. (2022). Ocelot, Leopardus pardalis (Mammalia, Carnivora, Felidae), home range in the Lowland Atlantic Forest of Southeastern Brazil. Neotropical Biology and Conservation, 17(4), 229-237. https://doi.org/10.3897/neotropical.17.e93828

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/neotropical.17.e93828

Keywords: ocelot, Leopardus pardalis, home range, camera traps, Atlantic Forest, spatial ecology, wildlife monitoring, Espírito Santo, latrines, kernel density estimation, Leopardus, pardalis

The new species was recovered during a six-hour field survey in November 2022 at the RPPN Alto da Figueira private reserve, a cloud forest near Nova Friburgo in Rio de Janeiro state. The researchers were searching for arthropod-associated fungi, including the “zombie-ant” fungi and related pathogens that infect spiders, moths, and other invertebrates. They inspected soil, leaves, trunks, and shrub surfaces, then noticed a narrow fungal structure projecting from a hole in the forest floor. Excavation revealed a trapdoor spider at the bottom of its burrow, covered in white mycelium and connected to a cylindrical, purple fruiting body.

That unusual combination of host, habitat, and fungal form helped place the specimen within the P. atypicola group while also showing that the familiar name concealed a much broader biological diversity. The team combined microscopic measurements with DNA sequences from the small subunit ribosomal RNA, large subunit ribosomal RNA, and translation elongation factor genes. A maximum-likelihood phylogeny showed that the Brazilian material was distinct from specimens of P. atypicola sensu stricto collected in Japan and from other lineages associated with spiders in the United States and Thailand.

Several features support recognition of P. atlanticum as a separate species. Its synnema, the stalk-like aggregation of fungal tissue that produces spores, was only about 2 centimeters long, compared with roughly 6 centimeters for the Japanese type material. It also had larger phialides, the cells that generate conidia, and cylindrical conidia that differed in size and shape from those described for P. atypicola. No sexual structures were observed, and the fungus has so far been found only at the Brazilian site, leading the authors to assign it a Data Deficient conservation status.

The unusual discovery depended on a field-based method the team calls “taxogenomics,” a combination of classical fungal taxonomy, ecological observations, and genome-scale DNA analysis. Rather than transporting samples to a distant sequencing facility, the researchers extracted DNA and prepared libraries in the field before reading them with an Oxford Nanopore Technologies MinION Mk1C. Their PCR-free genome-skimming approach recovered a broad cross-section of the organism’s DNA rather than targeting only a few conventional barcoding markers, allowing endogenous fungal sequences, associated microbes, and incidental organisms to be examined together.

After quality filtering, the analysis retained approximately 208 million DNA bases. Mapping these reads against the genome of the related fungus P. takamizusanense recovered about 10.1 million bases of endogenous fungal DNA and data from 2,115 genes. Separate calculations indicated depths of about 160 times for the TEF region, 234 times for SSU, and 394 times for LSU. Simulations using the error characteristics of the reads indicated that consensus sequences became highly reliable at coverage of 10 times or greater, helping the researchers judge whether the nanopore data were dependable enough for phylogenetic analysis.

Not all of the recovered DNA belonged to the target fungus. The bacterial sequences were dominated by Proteobacteria, including groups represented by Pseudomonas, Variovorax, and Pandoraea, while smaller fractions matched fungi such as Trichoderma and Epichloë. Some reads also resembled the genome of a fungus gnat in the family Mycetophilidae. Because reference genomes for the infected trapdoor spider and other organisms in its surroundings are scarce, the study could not determine whether all of this microbial material was directly associated with the fungus, carried by the host, or simply entered the sample from the surrounding environment.

The findings also indicate that P. atypicola is not one widely distributed species but a complex containing genetically, morphologically, and ecologically distinct fungi. Records linked to the group include infections of orb-weaving spiders, ground-dwelling spiders, trapdoor spiders, and spiders resting beneath leaves. Fungi infecting ground-dwelling hosts produce stalked fruiting bodies that can extend beyond burrows or other concealed locations, whereas the lineages associated with orb-weaving spiders tend to sporulate directly from the host’s body. The Brazilian species adds another ecological and geographic combination to this still incompletely sampled lineage.

The authors argue that recognizing cryptic species within the complex could affect estimates of biodiversity and open new avenues for biotechnology. Different lineages may produce distinct secondary metabolites, including compounds of possible medical or agricultural interest, but their chemistry cannot be assessed reliably without first clarifying which species produced them. The original P. atypicola material, collected in Tokyo in 1910, is too old and degraded for DNA extraction, so the researchers plan to seek modern specimens that could serve as an epitype and provide a firmer reference for the species.

The study also carries implications for conservation. The Atlantic Forest is among the world’s richest biodiversity hotspots, but it is heavily fragmented, and the cool, humid cloud-forest habitats above 1,000 meters occupy only a small fraction of its original extent. P. atlanticum may occur in other old-growth or well-preserved forests, yet its distribution remains unknown. The authors warn that climate change, habitat reduction, and further fragmentation could threaten poorly mapped fungi before their distributions or ecological roles become clear. More broadly, they call for targeted surveys of “dark taxa,” better training in taxogenomic methods, and reliable genomic and morphological references from authenticated specimens. In a field where a single day of fieldwork and portable sequencing technology can reveal a new species and glimpse its microbiome, those efforts could accelerate the long process of documenting life before much of it disappears.

Subject of Research: Discovery and genome characterization of a new spider-parasitizing Purpureocillium fungus in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest

Article Title: A new species of Purpureocillium ( Ophiocordycipitaceae ) fungus parasitizing trapdoor spiders in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest and its associated microbiome revealed through in situ “taxogenomics”

Article References: Araújo, J. P. M., Przelomska, N. A. S., Smith, R. J., Drechsler-Santos, E. R., Alves-Silva, G., Martins-Cunha, K., Hosoya, T., Luangsa-ard, J. J., Perrigo, A., Repullés, M., Matos-Maraví, P., Woods, R., Pérez-Escobar, O. A., & Antonelli, A. (2025). A new species of Purpureocillium (Ophiocordycipitaceae) fungus parasitizing trapdoor spiders in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest and its associated microbiome revealed through in situ “taxogenomics”. IMA Fungus, 16, Article e168534. https://doi.org/10.3897/imafungus.16.168534

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/imafungus.16.168534

Keywords: new fungal species, spider parasites, Purpureocillium atlanticum, Atlantic Forest, taxogenomics, Oxford Nanopore sequencing, fungal microbiome, cryptic species, biodiversity discovery, species, Purpureocillium, Ophiocordycipitaceae

Spiders are among the most successful terrestrial predators on Earth, with more than 50,000 described species exerting top-down effects on insect populations in both natural and human-disturbed environments. Yet their abundance and energy-rich bodies make them prey for a wide array of enemies, including fish, frogs, birds, reptiles, mammals, wasps, ants, mantids, centipedes, scorpions, solpugids, and other spiders. Some speciose groups of invertebrate predators, however, had never been directly observed attacking spiders. Among them were land planarians, flatworms of the phylum Platyhelminthes comprising more than 960 species, distributed mainly in tropical and moist terrestrial habitats.

The new report describes the first documented case of predation on a web-building spider by a land planarian. On 19 February 2014, while inspecting the web of Helvibis longicauda, a small theridiid spider whose females average just 2.9 milligrams in weight, researchers found a land planarian identified as Choeradoplana cf. gladismariae constricting the spider and covering it with sticky mucus. The web hung on a riverbank roughly 1.80 meters above the ground, and the event took place in the middle to late afternoon, an unusual time to catch these normally nocturnal animals in action.

What struck the observers most was the spider’s behavior. The female H. longicauda was still alive and clutching her egg sac with her legs, attempting to protect her offspring even as the flatworm tightened its grip. The researchers transported both animals to the research base for photography, and about an hour later the spider had become less active but remained attached to the egg sac, while the planarian appeared to be inserting its pharynx and feeding on its prey. The egg sac itself was left untouched, suggesting the flatworm targeted the spider rather than her reproductive investment.

Land planarians display a range of feeding strategies. Some species specialize in soft-bodied prey such as earthworms, while others are generalists that tackle a broad spectrum of organisms, including arthropods. Capturing such prey demands a sequence of predatory behaviors: intercepting the victim, perforating its exoskeleton, and secreting digestive fluids. Because planarians are furtive, most knowledge of their diet comes from laboratory studies rather than field observations. DNA sequencing of the gut contents of one species, Cephaloflexa bergi, revealed a remarkably diverse menu that included other planarians, woodlice, pygmy grasshoppers, lepidopterans, hymenopterans, harvestmen, and even spiders of the family Sparassidae. Those spiders, however, are fast, active wanderers that build no webs, and since some planarians also scavenge, it remained unclear whether the flatworm had actually caught its spider meal or merely fed on a carcass. A separate report of a planarian feeding on an unidentified spider suffered the same ambiguity.

The new observation removes that doubt. The planarian was caught in the act of constricting a living spider on its own web, providing the first direct evidence that these flatworms can actively capture web-building spiders. The researchers suggest the spider’s strong maternal instincts may have sealed her fate. Previous work showed that H. longicauda females are aggressive toward prey and toward infanticidal males, and that predation pressure on offspring drives an extended period of maternal care. Females rest close to the egg sac, continuously touching its surface and rarely moving away. The female in this encounter was probably overpowered precisely because she stayed near her eggs instead of fleeing.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the event is that the planarian was not trapped by the web. The three-dimensional silk structure of H. longicauda is highly adhesive, studded with viscid droplets that ensnare passing insects. Yet the flatworm moved across the abaxial surface of the leaf supporting the web without becoming stuck. The researchers propose that the mucus secreted by land planarians prevents the viscous threads from adhering, effectively neutralizing the web’s primary defense. If confirmed experimentally, this would mean that even complex, sticky, three-dimensional webs offer little protection against a slow-moving flatworm armed with the right chemistry.

The timing and location of the encounter also challenge assumptions about planarian ecology. Land planarians are highly sensitive to temperature and humidity and are usually nocturnal, hiding during the day under rocks, rotting logs, or leaf litter. Daylight sightings are rare. But the riverbank where this predation occurred maintains mild daytime temperatures, averaging 19.43 degrees Celsius, and very high relative humidity of about 94 percent, conditions that apparently allow daytime foraging. The event occurred at nearly two meters above the ground, and there is a previous record of the same species being observed during the day on a tree at two meters height in São Paulo, indicating that these flatworms can move considerable vertical distances while hunting, well beyond the ground-level habitats where they were thought to confine their search for prey.

Together, these findings broaden the known natural enemies of web-building spiders and add a new item to the diet of land planarians. They demonstrate that flatworms can capture and overpower predatory arthropods that themselves pose risks of injury and death, and that flexible foraging strategies allow planarians to exploit the environment both during the day and at heights far above the forest floor. The researchers hope their observation will open new avenues of research, using spiders and land planarians as model taxa in focal observations and controlled experiments on predator-prey interactions, a pairing that has been almost entirely overlooked until now.

Subject of Research: Predation of a web-building spider by a land planarian in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest

Article Title: Land planarians ( Platyhelminthes ) also prey on web-building spiders

Article References: Cardoso, J. C. F., Carbayo, F., & Gonzaga, M. O. (2023). Land planarians (Platyhelminthes) also prey on web-building spiders. Neotropical Biology and Conservation, 18(3), 157-162. https://doi.org/10.3897/neotropical.18.e103322

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/neotropical.18.e103322

Keywords: land planarians, spiders, predation, Atlantic Forest, Choeradoplana, Helvibis longicauda, flatworms, predator-prey interactions, Theridiidae, spider webs, foraging behavior, Neotropical Biology and Conservation

The research team, working in São Carlos in the state of São Paulo, focused on a tropical-subtropical basin of roughly 275 square kilometres that contains the municipality’s entire urban core. São Carlos is home to about 222,000 people, 96 percent of whom live in the urban zone, and its surrounding land is split between agricultural areas dominated by sugarcane, native vegetation and city. The region sits in the transition between two of the world’s 25 recognised biodiversity hotspots, making it a particularly sensitive setting for questions about how urban expansion reshapes the services ecosystems deliver.

To capture that reshaping, the researchers selected 43 sampling points along watercourses, spaced at least 200 metres apart and chosen to represent every landscape type in the watershed, from sealed city streets to farmland, peri-urban fringes and intact native vegetation. Around each point they mapped land use and canopy cover within a 500-metre buffer using satellite imagery and field verification. Bird communities were surveyed with the classic point-count method: eight ten-minute visits per point across all four seasons between 2016 and 2017, recording every species seen or heard within a 50-metre radius centred on the watercourse.

Three ecosystem service models completed the picture. The cooling effect was estimated with a model that scores each patch of green infrastructure by soil cover, canopy shading, patch size and regional climate parameters, translating the results into expected temperature differences of up to 4.8 degrees Celsius relative to bare sealed ground. Air pollutant removal was calculated for particulate matter under 10 micrometres in diameter, using a deposition-velocity formula combined with a Leaf Area Index derived from Sentinel-2 satellite imagery processed to one-metre resolution. Recreation opportunities were assessed with an adapted version of the ESTIMAP-Recreation model, which scores access infrastructure such as cycle paths, bus stops and streets alongside facilities like playgrounds and sports fields, then maps the combined opportunity spectrum across the basin.

The results were unambiguous in their spatial pattern. Landscape type significantly influenced all four indicators, and post-hoc comparisons showed that points fully embedded in the urban matrix differed significantly from every other zone. Urban points recorded the lowest mean values for pollutant removal, cooling effect and bird richness, yet the highest mean values for recreation opportunities. Areas dominated by native vegetation, by contrast, stood apart from all other zones in pollutant removal, and the peri-urban transition zone emerged as a biodiversity sweet spot, harbouring higher bird richness than the city while retaining strong regulatory services.

Correlation analysis revealed the underlying architecture of these patterns. Pollutant removal and cooling effect rose together in a strong positive relationship, both driven by canopy cover, and bird richness tracked both of them closely, reflecting the way well-structured vegetation provides habitat as well as shade and leaf surface. But recreation opportunities ran in the opposite direction, showing significant negative correlations with cooling effect, pollutant removal and bird richness alike. This trade-off, the authors note, was unexpected, because the recreation measure was specifically nature-based, and one might expect the sites designed for people to enjoy green space to also be the greenest. Instead, the places people visit most often for leisure are the places where nature’s regulatory machinery is weakest.

The explanation lies in the structure of urban green infrastructure. The vegetation patches inside São Carlos are mostly small fragments, gardens and parks with low canopy cover, sufficient to support access infrastructure but not to generate meaningful cooling or pollution capture. Meanwhile, the demand for those services is highest exactly where they are scarcest, since dense populations and fossil-fuel combustion concentrate both heat and particulate pollution in the urban core. The study also identified a bright spot: a large continuous vegetation fragment belonging to the Federal University of São Carlos and a neighbouring ecological park in the north of the basin, which combines high bird richness, strong regulatory services, recreational trails and at least two springs feeding the Monjolinho River, a textbook example of a multifunctional landscape.

To test whether simple interventions could shift the balance, the team simulated four reforestation scenarios on public land, increasing tree canopy on available non-forested areas by 25, 50, 75 and 100 percent. The available sites amounted to only 1.46 percent of the total basin area, yet the gains were measurable. In the most ambitious scenario, pollutant removal rose by between 2.61 and 7.73 percent depending on the micro-basin, and the cooling effect by between 1.35 and 3.34 percent. A regression model linking vegetation cover to bird species counts in urban and peri-urban zones showed that roughly 39 percent of the variation in bird richness could be explained by forested area alone, suggesting that even modest greening could lift the bird communities that carry pollination, seed dispersal and pest-control functions through the city.

The authors argue that these findings should reshape how planners think about green space. Rather than treating recreation and regulation as competing goals, they propose planning multifunctional landscapes in which reforestation of degraded public land simultaneously boosts cooling, air quality and bird habitat, while targeted infrastructure improvements bring recreation opportunities into the peri-urban and natural zones where the ecological foundation is strongest. Because the analysis was conducted at the scale of individual micro-basins, decision-makers can rank priorities section by section, directing scarce investment to areas such as the Tijuco Preto and Gregório sub-basins, which showed low and medium service levels even after simulated restoration.

The study is candid about its limits. Some models were adapted to local conditions, high-resolution land-cover maps were unavailable, and the recreation assessment relied on OpenStreetMap data verified in the field rather than on structured input from local stakeholders. Even so, the core message stands with unusual clarity for a field often muddied by context: in this Brazilian watershed, the services nature provides and the services people seek are spatially misaligned, and closing that gap is neither mysterious nor expensive. Planting trees on public land that is already idle, the authors conclude, is a simple, near-term nature-based solution that pays dividends for climate, air quality and biodiversity at once, provided planners account for the trade-offs that the landscape itself has already revealed.

Subject of Research: Ecosystem services and bird richness across an urban-to-natural gradient in south-eastern Brazil

Article Title: Bird richness and Ecosystems Services across an urban to natural gradient in south-eastern Brazil: implications for landscape planning and future scenarios

Article References: Lessi, B., Geneletti, D., Cortinovis, C., Dias, M., & Reis, M. (2024). Bird richness and Ecosystems Services across an urban to natural gradient in south-eastern Brazil: implications for landscape planning and future scenarios. One Ecosystem, 9, Article e114955. https://doi.org/10.3897/oneeco.9.e114955

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/oneeco.9.e114955

Keywords: ecosystem services, bird richness, urban ecology, Atlantic Forest, Cerrado, nature-based solutions, cooling effect, air pollutant removal, PM10, landscape planning, reforestation, recreation

The genus Adenomera, established in 1867, currently comprises 29 recognized species distributed across tropical South America east of the Andes. These frogs, commonly known as foam-nesting terrestrial breeders, are notorious for their high intra- and interspecific similarity, a trait that has spawned numerous cryptic species complexes—groups of organisms that look nearly identical but may represent distinct evolutionary lineages. The thomei clade, which encompasses Adenomera thomei and two unnamed lineages designated Adenomera sp. L and Adenomera sp. M, is restricted to Brazil’s Atlantic Forest biome, one of the world’s most biodiverse and most threatened tropical forests.

Adenomera thomei was formally described in 2006 from specimens collected in a cocoa plantation in the municipality of Linhares, in the state of Espírito Santo. Since then, records of the species have surfaced in the states of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Bahia. However, the specific boundaries among the lineages within the thomei clade remain unclear, largely because Adenomera sp. L and Adenomera sp. M—both found only in southern Bahia—are so poorly characterized. Bioacoustic, morphological, and cytogenetic data for representatives of this clade are scarce, and until now, none of these data streams had been applied to distinguish between the two unnamed lineages.

Cytogenetic studies on the genus Adenomera date back to the 1970s, when the karyotypes of Adenomera andreae, Adenomera hylaedactyla, Adenomera lutzi, and Adenomera marmorata were first described. Yet in the five decades since, the volume of chromosomal information for the genus has not significantly advanced. A 2009 study by Campos and colleagues added karyotypes for populations from western São Paulo, and the karyotype of Adenomera diptyx was described in 2011. In total, cytogenetic information existed for only five of the 29 described species—a paucity that has made it extraordinarily difficult to understand chromosomal evolution within the genus or to delimit species with confidence.

The new study, led by researchers working at the Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz in Ilhéus, Bahia, analyzed 12 specimens collected from three sites in the state of Bahia under license SISBIO 62181. Six specimens, identified as Adenomera cf. thomei based on bioacoustic data matching patterns recorded for populations in the thomei clade, were collected in the municipality of Ilhéus. The remaining six, identified as Adenomera sp. L, were collected in Igrapiúna. The specimens—including adult males, females, and juveniles—were deposited in the UESC Herpetological collection as vouchers for future reference.

To visualize the chromosomes, the team followed a modified protocol originally developed by Schmid in 1978. Specimens were treated with a 2% colchicine solution to arrest cells in metaphase, the stage of cell division when chromosomes are most condensed and visible. Chromosomal preparations were then obtained from intestinal epithelial cells, which were kept in a hypotonic solution of 0.075 M potassium chloride for 40 minutes before fixation in Carnoy solution—a classic mixture of methanol and acetic acid. Cell suspensions were placed on slides, dried at room temperature in the dark, and stained with 3% Giemsa for 10 minutes to reveal chromosome composition and morphology.

The results were strikingly uniform. All 12 individuals, regardless of species designation or collection site, showed a diploid number of 2n = 24 with a fundamental number (FN) of 34. The karyotypic formula—4 metacentric + 6 submetacentric + 14 telocentric chromosomes—was identical across every specimen analyzed. In practical terms, this means the frogs carry two pairs of metacentric chromosomes (pairs 1 and 5), three pairs of submetacentric chromosomes (pairs 2, 3, and 4), and seven pairs of telocentric chromosomes (pairs 6 through 12). No heteromorphic sex chromosomes—differences in chromosome form between males and females—were detected in any of the individuals examined.

When compared with previously published karyotypes for the genus, the new data reveal intriguing patterns. The karyotype of Adenomera cf. thomei and Adenomera sp. L is identical to that of Adenomera marmorata (2n = 24, FN = 34) and to certain populations previously designated A. cf. marmorata from São Paulo. It also matches specimens identified as Adenomera sp. J and a specimen from Santa Branca, São Paulo. Meanwhile, Adenomera diptyx, A. andreae, and A. hylaedactyla all show diploid numbers of 2n = 26, with varying fundamental numbers. One particularly unusual case is A. aff. bokermanni, which displayed an odd diploid number of 2n = 23—most likely the result of a centric fusion involving telocentric chromosome pairs 7 and 9, a hypothesis proposed by Campos and colleagues but never definitively confirmed.

The researchers note that chromosome pair 8 in their specimens is telocentric, whereas in A. aff. bokermanni it is subtelocentric—a difference that could reflect genuine evolutionary divergence or simply variation within a single specimen. Because of this ambiguity, pairs 7 and 9 were excluded from comparative analyses. The team also emphasizes that no bioacoustic, molecular, or morphological data are currently available for the Ilhéus population of Adenomera cf. thomei, and that a comprehensive taxonomic review—including all species within the thomei clade—is urgently needed to clarify their specific limits.

Comparative cytogenetics has proven to be a powerful tool for recovering phylogenetic relationships and confirming taxonomic identity across a wide range of organisms, from mammals to insects to plants. In the case of Adenomera, chromosomal data previously provided support for taxonomic decisions in a broad species delimitation study of A. marmorata that integrated DNA sequences, morphology, and bioacoustics. The new karyotype descriptions for the thomei clade represent a first step toward applying the same integrative approach to this enigmatic group. Further morphological, bioacoustic, and cytogenetic analyses—including C-banding to reveal heterochromatin distribution and silver staining (AgNor) to identify nucleolar organizer regions—are needed to better delineate the lineages within the clade. For now, the chromosomes of these Atlantic Forest frogs stand as a testament to how much remains hidden beneath the surface of even the most familiar-looking species, and how the tiniest cellular structures may hold the key to understanding the grand sweep of amphibian evolution in one of the planet’s most imperiled biomes.

Subject of Research: Cytogenetics of Adenomera frogs in the Atlantic Forest

Article Title: First karyotype description of the species of Adenomera Steindachner, 1867 ( Anura , Leptodactylidae ) in the “ thomei ” clade

Article References: Dominato, R. C., de Oliveira, G. C., Cassini, C. S., Orrico, V. G. D., Mariano, C. D. S. F., & Silva, J. G. (2022). First karyotype description of the species of Adenomera Steindachner, 1867 (Anura, Leptodactylidae) in the “ thomei” clade. Comparative Cytogenetics, 16(3), 151-159. https://doi.org/10.3897/compcytogen.v16.i3.82641

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/compcytogen.v16.i3.82641

Keywords: Adenomera, karyotype, cytogenetics, Atlantic Forest, amphibians, cryptic species, thomei clade, Bahia, Leptodactylidae, chromosomes, First, description

The study, published in the journal Natural History Collections and Museomics, documents two nearly identical copies of the work: one held in Lisbon, bound in luxurious reddish leather stamped with the Portuguese crown, and a second that surfaced at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair in April 2013, where it sold for 117,000 US dollars to the Brazilian collector António Bonchristiano. Both volumes were prepared using lepidochromy, sometimes called “nature printing”, a method in which the scales of a butterfly’s wings are transferred directly onto paper or canvas, preserving their true colors and patterns at a time when no painter or printer could reproduce such brilliance by other means.

The technique’s origins are murky and colorful. The Dutch painter Otto Marseus van Schrieck pressed butterfly wings onto his canvases in the seventeenth century, and the British artist John Peele described the method in a 1735 manual on watercolor painting. The first scientific description came from the British naturalist George Edwards, who in 1747 briefly explained the process and later published a “receipt for taking the figures of butterflies on thin gummed paper”. The French clergyman Jean-Baptiste-Gabriel-Alexandre Rozier published a similar account in 1771, attributing the discovery to an unnamed French friar who noticed that a butterfly landing on freshly varnished barometer left its scales stuck to the varnish. The method flourished in nineteenth-century France, where it acquired the name lepidochromy, and lingered into the twentieth century in works from North America, Venezuela, Japan and Ceylon before being abandoned entirely by entomologists.

What makes the Brazilian volumes extraordinary is their age and provenance. The Lisbon copy was originally held in the library of the Royal Cabinet of Natural History of Ajuda, the most important natural history collection in eighteenth-century Portugal. When French naturalist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire visited Lisbon in 1808 during the French invasions, he shipped the book, along with hundreds of other specimens, to the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris; it was returned to Lisbon in 1814. Its frontispiece bears a lavish dedication to Queen Maria I of Portugal, ending with a single letter “S.”, while the Bonchristiano copy is dedicated to Luis Vasconcelos de Sousa, Viceroy of Brazil, and explicitly states that it was offered by Father Francisco Solano.

That dedication is the key to a major revision of the book’s authorship. Historians had long attributed the work solely to Friar José Mariano da Conceição Veloso, one of the founding figures of Brazilian natural history, who led the first official botanical survey of Rio de Janeiro between 1783 and 1790 under the Viceroy’s patronage. But the new analysis argues that the work should be credited to two authors: Veloso, who directed the science and identified the species, and Francisco Solano, the expedition’s illustrator and preparator, who was almost certainly the hands behind the delicate lepidochromy transfers. A 1797 report by Veloso to Portugal’s prime minister describes “one collection of butterflies pressed by the colored dye with which the membranes of their wings are covered, a work so rare and valuable that the supplicant attests that no such work exists in any other royal cabinets in Europe”, confirming the book was completed before Veloso left Brazil for Lisbon in 1790.

Each volume contains 172 plates depicting 338 individual lepidopterans at life size, each shown in dorsal and ventral views. The wings are genuine lepidochromy transfers, but the bodies are painted in watercolor, with four plates painted entirely by hand. Every page is framed with a border of red ink and gold leaf, and the species are organized according to Linnaeus’s tenth edition of Systema Naturae, grouped into categories with Homeric names such as Equites Troiani and Equites Achivi, honoring the defenders and attackers of Troy. The researchers’ taxonomic review shows that the 169 taxa the authors believed they were depicting actually represent 145 currently recognized species from nine families, with Nymphalidae the best represented. Because males and females of the same species were often given different names, and because eighteenth-century descriptions were vague, the authors coined entirely new Latin names even for species Linnaeus himself had already described.

The book is also a window into the Atlantic Forest of the late 1700s. Most of the species depicted are still found around Rio de Janeiro today, including the endangered Parides ascanius. One plate, however, remains a genuine mystery: a yellow, orange and black moth labeled “Papilio Heliconii Saphus” that cannot be matched to any known species of the moth subfamilies Sterrhinae or Dioptinae, possibly because several mimetic species share that warning coloration. Remarkably, one specimen depicted in the book, the butterfly Pierella keithbrowni, was not formally described by science until 2016, more than two centuries after its wings were pressed onto paper.

Conservation analysis of the Lisbon copy reveals the physical toll of centuries. The gold leaf borders are torn and fractured, particularly near the spine, because the rigid adhesives used to fix the gold, likely natural glues such as hide glue or egg white, do not flex with paper as it swells and shrinks with humidity. Small black spots of fungal growth dot the damaged areas, evidence of fluctuating environmental conditions over the decades. The researchers recommend stable storage at temperatures between 16 and 19 degrees Celsius and relative humidity between 45 and 60 percent to halt further deterioration.

Perhaps the most provocative conclusion of the study is that “Lepidoptera Fluminensis” should not be thought of as a book at all. It was never printed, mass-produced or distributed, and none of its plates carried descriptions, so none of the names proposed by Veloso and Solano carries formal nomenclatural weight. Instead, the authors argue, each page is effectively a bound collection of scientific specimens: the actual scales of actual animals, collected in a defined region between roughly 1780 and 1790, labeled under the Linnean system. Because the biological material survives, the plates could conceivably yield DNA, making lepidochromy specimens something close to tissue samples with the bonus of an exact visual record of the individual animal.

The work also blurs the line between art and science in ways that resonate today. Lepidochromy began as an artistic trick, was adopted for scientific documentation, and ended as a curiosity, yet the volumes it produced were simultaneously artworks, diplomatic gifts to royalty, and serious biodiversity surveys. Together with Veloso’s “Flora Fluminensis” and the unpublished “Ichthyologia Fluminensis”, the butterfly book testifies to a remarkable flowering of natural history in colonial Brazil, and to a naturalist whose Homeric ambitions, like the defenders of Troy he honored in his species names, were ultimately frustrated, his contributions losing priority to later naturalists. Two and a half centuries later, the butterflies themselves have outlasted the neglect, their colors still glowing on the page.

Subject of Research: History and taxonomic review of the eighteenth-century lepidochromy book Lepidoptera Fluminensis on Brazilian butterflies and moths

Article Title: “Lepidoptera Fluminensis”, a forgotten eighteenth-century lepidochromy book on Brazilian moths and butterflies

Article References: Ceríaco, L. M. P., Zacca, T., de Menezes, H. F., Perestrelo, S., Santos, B. S., Ferreira, R. N., Bívar-de-Sousa, A., & Mielke, O. H. H. (2025). “Lepidoptera Fluminensis”, a forgotten eighteenth-century lepidochromy book on Brazilian moths and butterflies. Natural History Collections and Museomics, 2, 1-102. https://doi.org/10.3897/nhcm.2.153540

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/nhcm.2.153540

Keywords: lepidochromy, Lepidoptera Fluminensis, Brazilian butterflies, natural history, José Mariano da Conceição Veloso, Francisco Solano, eighteenth century, Linnaeus, Museu Nacional de História Natural e da Ciência, nature printing, Atlantic Forest, taxonomy

The specimen was collected by Johannes Theodor Reinhardt, a Danish zoologist born in 1816 who visited Brazil on three occasions. Between 1845 and 1847, Reinhardt sailed aboard the corvette Galathea, a scientific expedition dispatched by the King of Denmark. After the Galathea docked in Rio de Janeiro in May 1847, Reinhardt left the expedition and traveled inland to Lagoa Santa, Minas Gerais, to meet his compatriot, the famed naturalist Peter Lund. On the way, he passed through Juiz de Fora, where museum records show he collected bird specimens on June 21, 1847. The museum entry for NHMD R4448 dates to February 6, 1849, meaning the worm lizard was almost certainly gathered during that same overland journey — a snapshot of Atlantic Forest life from a landscape that has since been transformed by nearly two centuries of urbanization.

The specimen’s identity has changed before. It was first catalogued as Amphisbaena vermicularis, a widespread species of Brazil’s open vegetation areas, until the renowned herpetologist Carl Gans reidentified it as A. prunicolor in his 1966 taxonomic review of the darwinii group. Gans cited another Minas Gerais specimen as A. prunicolor too, from São Cyprião, housed at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. But that record never quite fit. A. prunicolor is primarily found in southern Brazil, the southeastern edge of Paraguay, and Misiones, Argentina — far from the Minas Gerais highlands. A recent reanalysis of the Harvard specimen revealed it is actually A. metallurga, a species described only in 2015, with its collection locality corrected to the area of the current municipality of Alvorada de Minas. The Juiz de Fora specimen, however, remained unexamined until now.

Worm lizards of the genus Amphisbaena are among the most specialized reptiles on Earth. Fully adapted to a subterranean existence, they spend their lives tunneling through soil, their bodies reduced to ring-like segments called annuli, their eyes vestigial, and their limbs absent. This extreme specialization comes at a cost: their morphology is highly conserved, meaning closely related species can be nearly indistinguishable from one another. Some pairs, such as A. miringoera and A. mitchelli, are very similar, while others, like A. anaemariae and A. mebengokre, are practically indistinguishable. Even the European worm lizards Blanus cinereus and B. vandellii pose similar identification challenges. For NHMD R4448, the diagnosis therefore rested on a careful count of annuli, segments, and scales — the technical language of amphisbaenian taxonomy.

The specimen presents 183 body annuli, three lateral annuli, and 20 tail annuli, with autotomy on the eighth tail annulus — a breakage plane that allows the animal to shed its tail when seized by a predator. At mid-body, it has 12 dorsal and 16 ventral segments per annulus, three supralabials, three infralabials, one post-ocular, one temporal, a row of two post-genials, and a row of six post-malars. Four sequentially arranged pre-cloacal pores, six pre-cloacal scales, and 13 post-cloacal scales complete the picture. The animal measures 113 millimeters in snout-vent length with a 16 millimeter tail. These characteristics quickly separate the specimen from all Amphisbaena species except A. hogei and A. prunicolor, while aligning closely with A. metallurga — but the numbers ultimately point to A. hogei.

The case against A. metallurga is straightforward. Although about 10 percent of known A. metallurga specimens have four pre-cloacal pores, most have two, and the modal number of ventral segments is 14. The presence of 183 body annuli and 20 tail annuli would set a new lower limit for the species, whose known range is 185 to 199 body annuli and 23 to 25 tail annuli. Moreover, A. metallurga is known from mountainous areas at the eastern limit of the Atlantic Forest, in contact with the Cerrado, roughly 240 kilometers north of Juiz de Fora. The case against A. prunicolor is subtler. The two species are mainly distinguished by tail annuli counts — 18 to 27 in A. prunicolor and 15 to 19 in A. hogei — though one A. hogei specimen from Maricá, Rio de Janeiro, has 20 tail annuli, matching NHMD R4448. Analysis of raw data from 72 A. prunicolor specimens with intact tails shows that 51 have 21 or more tail annuli, mainly 22.

Size offers another overlooked clue. Adult A. prunicolor individuals average 178 millimeters in snout-vent length, with a range of 141 to 238 millimeters across a sample of 110 adults, while the largest known A. hogei specimen measures 176 millimeters. NHMD R4448, at 113 millimeters, could theoretically be a young A. prunicolor, but its geographic position aligns far better with A. hogei. Coloration, typically decisive, is unavailable in this old specimen — A. prunicolor tends toward brown-purple tones that can fade in very old animals, while A. hogei is typically light brown dorsally. Without coloration, morphological differentiation between the two species becomes genuinely challenging, which is precisely why the specimen sat misidentified for so long.

With the reidentification confirmed, the known distribution of A. hogei now stretches from Joinville in Santa Catarina in the south, to Itapeva in São Paulo in the west, Maricá in Rio de Janeiro in the east, and Juiz de Fora in the north. The species is essentially an Atlantic Forest endemic, inhabiting mainly the Serra do Mar coastal forests ecoregion, but also recorded in Alto Paraná Atlantic forests and its ecotone with the Cerrado and Araucaria moist forests. The Juiz de Fora record is the first in the Bahia interior forests ecoregion, an area with a more seasonal climate and semideciduous forests. The author also examined a specimen from Restinga de Grumari in Rio de Janeiro — the holotype of the unavailable name Amphisbaena carioca — and concluded it too belongs to A. hogei, noting that irregularities in the parietal region are common in some amphisbaenian species and that the desiccated state of the specimen may have exaggerated apparent differences in tail compression.

Despite its relatively wide distribution, most records of A. hogei are based on specimens collected more than half a century ago. The species may have disappeared from some localities, such as the city of São Paulo, due to urbanization — a sobering reminder that even common-seeming reptiles can vanish from transformed landscapes. Because of its small size and difficult diagnosis, more specimens in major zoological collections could be misidentified, highlighting the importance of broad analyses of museum material. The reidentification of NHMD R4448 shows that the answers to pressing conservation questions sometimes lie not in the field, but in the careful reexamination of specimens collected generations ago — a quiet triumph of museum science in the age of molecular biology.

Subject of Research: Herpetology and museum taxonomy

Article Title: Reidentification of a 19 th century specimen reveals the first record of Amphisbaena hogei Vanzolini, 1950 ( Squamata , Amphisbaenidae ) in Minas Gerais, Brazil

Article References: Costa, H. C. (2024). Reidentification of a 19th century specimen reveals the first record of Amphisbaena hogei Vanzolini, 1950 (Squamata, Amphisbaenidae) in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Evolutionary Systematics, 8(2), 273-278. https://doi.org/10.3897/evolsyst.8.129984

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/evolsyst.8.129984

Keywords: Amphisbaena hogei, worm lizard, Minas Gerais, Atlantic Forest, museum specimen, Reinhardt, taxonomy, reidentification, Brazil, conservation, herpetology, Evolutionary Systematics

Phenology, the study of recurring life-cycle events such as leaf flushing, leaf shedding, flowering, and fruiting, has historically been built on a temperate foundation. In Europe and North America, winter dormancy imposed by low light and freezing temperatures gives plants an unmistakable annual rhythm, making it relatively easy to read climatic signals in their behavior. Tropical and subtropical forests, by contrast, have long been assumed to lack strong seasonal rhythms, a paradigm that recent advances in tropical dendrochronology have begun to dismantle. Yet the theoretical framework for interpreting plant responses to climate change remains heavily biased toward temperate systems, leaving scientists with a genuine blind spot about how tropical and subtropical trees will fare as the planet warms.

The new study set out to chip away at that blind spot from an unusual vantage point: an urban forest. The research took place in five hectares of Semideciduous Seasonal Forest fragments at the Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos in São Leopoldo, Rio Grande do Sul, divided into twenty randomly distributed plots of one hundred square meters each. The region’s humid subtropical climate brings average January temperatures of 24.5 degrees Celsius, cool Julys averaging 14.3 degrees, and abundant rainfall of roughly 1,324 millimeters per year. Day length swings from just over fourteen hours in December to barely ten hours in June, providing exactly the kind of annual light gradient that can serve as a reliable calendar signal for plants.

From a prior phytosociological survey that catalogued 469 tree individuals across 60 species, the researchers selected the eight most frequent and abundant natives: Allophylus edulis, Casearia sylvestris, Guarea macrophylla, Mimosa bimucronata, Myrsine coriacea, Myrsine umbellata, Schinus glandulosum, and Schinus terebinthifolia. For each species they chose eight individuals, sixty-four trees in total, and monitored them every two weeks from January 2016 through December 2017, forty-eight visits recording the presence or absence of each of the four phenophases. Several of these species, including Mimosa bimucronata and both Schinus species, had never before been studied at this resolution in southern Brazil, making the dataset a genuine first for the region.

To detect seasonality in the resulting binary records, the team turned to circular statistics, converting calendar dates into angles around a 360-degree circle and applying the Rayleigh test to determine whether activity was uniformly distributed or concentrated in particular periods. All species showed statistically non-uniform patterns for every phenophase, with p-values below 0.001, but concentration varied dramatically. Leaf flushing was strongly seasonal in five of the eight species, peaking in late winter and spring, while leaf shedding was remarkably diffuse for most, with only Schinus glandulosum concentrating its leaf drop in early June at the start of winter. Flowering was the sharpest signal of all: every species reached a Rayleigh value above 0.6, with peaks scattered across the calendar from September through December and into the following autumn.

The real innovation came at the community level. Rather than simply describing each species in isolation, the researchers ran a Principal Component Analysis on the activity-index series of all eight species for each phenophase, using Spearman’s correlation to handle the peaked, non-normal data. If the analysis yielded significant shared axes, the community could be said to move together; if not, each species was marching to its own drummer. The verdict was unambiguous. Leaf flushing produced one significant axis explaining 43 percent of the variation, with all species loading positively, meaning the entire community produces new leaves from roughly May or June through November or December. Leaf shedding yielded two significant axes, splitting the community into two groups, one shedding leaves from July to October and the other from March to July, while a second common pattern showed all species avoiding leaf loss during the hottest, brightest months.

Reproduction told a completely different story. For both flowering and fruiting, no PCA axis reached significance, meaning the reproductive schedules of the eight species are statistically independent of one another. Flowering peaks ran the gamut: A. edulis and C. sylvestris flowered in early September, G. macrophylla in December, M. bimucronata in early March, M. coriacea in June, M. umbellata in May, S. glandulosum in early October, and S. terebinthifolia in late March. Notably, no species flowered in January or July, the months of climatic extremes, a pattern the authors link to unfavorable conditions for pollinators and fertilization physiology, effects that urban heat and urban climate extremes may amplify further. Fruiting peaks clustered in early winter and spring for the species with concentrated fruiting, consistent with the zoochorous, animal-dispersed seeds that dominate pioneer Atlantic Forest communities and tie reproductive timing tightly to the behavior of birds and other frugivores.

When the significant community axes were correlated with local climate records from a meteorological station roughly forty kilometers away, precipitation dropped out of the picture entirely. Instead, temperature and day length emerged as the governing signals. Leaf flushing was negatively correlated with both temperature and day length, meaning the community builds new leaves during cooler months and shorter days, preemptively staging vegetative growth before conditions peak rather than gambling on midsummer. Leaf shedding showed an inverse relationship: the shared second axis correlated positively with temperature and day length, confirming that no species drops leaves during the hottest, brightest periods. The authors attribute the diffuseness of leaf fall in most species partly to wind and storm damage common in the region, and suggest that litter-driven changes in soil nutrition at the start of spring may explain why one group of species sheds leaves precisely when days grow long.

The ecological and practical implications ripple outward. All eight species are early-successional natives widely used in agroforestry systems and Atlantic Forest restoration programs, so knowing when they leaf out, flower, and fruit directly informs seed collection schedules, plantation planning, and the harvest of non-timber forest products that support small family economies in Rio Grande do Sul. The community-level approach itself is a methodological contribution, since most phenological studies analyze species in isolation and rarely test whether a shared pattern exists at all. The finding that vegetative activity synchronizes around the light calendar while reproduction disperses across the year offers a template for how subtropical communities may be organized, and a caution against assuming reproductive phenology can be predicted from climatic variables alone when factors like tree age, pollination, competition, and disperser behavior intervene.

Perhaps the most provocative thread is the urban setting itself. Previous work has shown that city trees often grow faster but live shorter lives, and that urban conditions can delay or advance phenological events, yet almost no data exist for subtropical urban forests. Here, the community’s overall climatic responses matched those documented in natural subtropical forests, suggesting day length remains the master signal even amid pruning and urban edge effects. But subtle shifts in timing were observed, and the authors argue that disentangling urbanization from climate will require longer time series, larger spatial coverage, and ultimately genetic and physiological studies of how these species perceive and respond to environmental cues. As climate change reshapes seasonal calendars worldwide, forests like this five-hectare fragment, wedged inside a Brazilian city, may become some of the most informative natural laboratories we have for watching trees renegotiate their relationship with time.

Subject of Research: Climatic drivers of vegetative and reproductive phenology in a subtropical urban forest tree community

Article Title: Climatic signals on phenological patterns among tree species in a subtropical forest community

Article References: Olmedo, G. M., Raguse-Quadros, M., Conrado, G. T., & Oliveira, J. M. (2023). Climatic signals on phenological patterns among tree species in a subtropical forest community. Neotropical Biology and Conservation, 18(3), 191-208. https://doi.org/10.3897/neotropical.18.e103506

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/neotropical.18.e103506

Keywords: phenology, subtropical forest, urban forest, leaf flushing, leaf shedding, flowering, fruiting, day length, temperature, Atlantic Forest, circular statistics, climate change

The research team assessed eleven of the twenty-three Conservation Units existing in Rio Grande do Sul, all of them full-protection areas spanning two of Brazil’s most important biomes: the Atlantic Forest and the Pampa. The sample included eight State Parks, such as Turvo, Itapuã, Tainhas and Delta do Jacuí, along with the Serra Geral Biological Reserve, the Aratinga Ecological Station and the Banhado dos Pachecos Wildlife Refuge. Together these areas protect thousands of hectares of highly threatened forest and grassland, home to native flora and fauna listed in official state decrees as imperilled by habitat fragmentation, hunting and illegal wildlife trade.

To measure how well these areas are actually being run, the researchers applied an adapted version of the Measurement of the Effectiveness of Management of Protected Areas, known by its Spanish acronym EMAP. The method, originally developed in Latin America and grounded in the quality-management principles of the ISO 10004 standard, breaks protected area management down into eight scopes, from planning and administrative capacity to infrastructure, legal standing, scientific knowledge and the quality of the natural resources themselves. Within those scopes, the team scored seventy-three indicators across sixty-five evaluation scenarios, using a five-level Likert scale in which zero represents a very unsatisfactory standard and four represents excellence.

The data came from three complementary sources: a review of each unit’s management plan and official documents, face-to-face interviews with the managers conducted during visits of roughly two days per unit, and direct field observation. Fieldwork took place between March and July 2022. Because every unit in the sample already possessed a management plan, the study could focus on how well the machinery of management was actually functioning rather than simply whether the paperwork existed.

The results were stark. Ninety-one percent of the assessed units scored between average and very unsatisfactory on management effectiveness. Two units, Espinilho State Park at 31.6 percent and Ibitiriá State Park at 39.6 percent, fell into the very unsatisfactory category. Four more, Delta do Jacuí, Itapeva, Espigão Alto and Tainhas State Parks, landed in the unsatisfactory band. Four units, Turvo State Park, Aratinga Ecological Station, Itapuã State Park and Serra Geral Biological Reserve, reached only an average standard. A single unit, the Banhado dos Pachecos Wildlife Refuge, achieved a high or satisfactory score of 85.8 percent, and not one unit reached the level of excellence.

To understand the underlying structure of these results, the researchers ran ordination analyses on their data matrices. A Principal Component Analysis of the eight scopes, tested for significance with a randomisation procedure, produced a single significant axis explaining 63.8 percent of the total variation. This axis formed a clean gradient of management quality across the state, with the weakest units at one end, the strongest at the other, and every scope except the quality of natural resources and current uses correlating strongly and positively with the gradient. In other words, units that do well in one dimension of management tend to do well across the board, while struggling units tend to struggle everywhere.

A second ordination, this time across forty-three individual indicators, confirmed the same pattern at finer resolution and identified the indicators most tightly linked to management success. Biophysical knowledge topped the list with a correlation of 0.97, followed by the demarcation of unit boundaries, compliance with norms, the dynamics of organisation and planning, the existence of an advisory board, operations management programmes, the dissemination of research results, research infrastructure and, crucially, the management plan itself. Interestingly, the analysis also uncovered a moderate inverse relationship with social conflicts, suggesting that units with stronger overall management tend to record more social conflict, possibly because better-run, more visible units attract and document more stakeholder friction.

The study’s diagnosis echoes a growing body of evidence from elsewhere in Brazil and beyond. Previous EMAP assessments in Minas Gerais found that sixty percent of thirty-nine integral protection units showed unsatisfactory management, and in São Paulo State, eighty-eight percent of forty-one units fell between average and unsatisfactory. The Rio Grande do Sul results fit squarely within this national pattern, pointing to systemic weaknesses rather than isolated local failures. Among the most persistent problems identified were outdated management plans, some published more than two decades ago, chronic shortages of staff and funding, precarious or absent infrastructure, unresolved land tenure and, in several cases, the complete lack of a consultative council, which three of the parks, Delta do Jacuí, Espinilho and Ibitiriá, still lack.

The authors argue that these deficiencies prevent the units from achieving their legal conservation objectives, with cascading consequences for biodiversity, ecological processes and the social and economic benefits that protected areas are meant to provide. They recommend a package of corrective measures: adopting a quali-quantitative evaluation model, ideally through a mathematical framework, so that managers can periodically measure their own performance; increasing staff numbers and training both teams and managers; improving infrastructure and equipment; guaranteeing regular budget allocations; completing land regularisation; establishing consultative councils where they are missing; and urgently reviewing and updating management plans so that zoning, monitoring programmes and public-use rules reflect current realities.

The broader lesson is one that conservation science has been repeating for decades: creating a protected area is a necessary but insufficient act. Without sustained investment in people, planning and accountability, the boundaries of a park or reserve become little more than lines on paper. The EMAP method, the researchers note, proved to be a practical and adaptable instrument that managers themselves can apply once trained, making regular self-assessment a realistic first step. As Brazil and other biodiversity-rich nations work toward global targets for expanding protected area coverage, this study from the southern edge of the Atlantic Forest and the heart of the Pampa serves as a pointed reminder that the quality of protection matters just as much as the quantity of land set aside.

Subject of Research: Management effectiveness of strictly protected nature conservation units in Rio Grande do Sul, southern Brazil

Article Title: Management effectiveness of Nature Conservation Units in southern Brazil

Article References: Witt, P. B. R., Faria, H. H. D., Oliveira, J. D., & Oliveira, L. R. D. (2023). Management effectiveness of Nature Conservation Units in southern Brazil. Neotropical Biology and Conservation, 18(3), 209-230. https://doi.org/10.3897/neotropical.18.e103019

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/neotropical.18.e103019

Keywords: protected areas, conservation units, management effectiveness, EMAP, Atlantic Forest, Pampa, Rio Grande do Sul, biodiversity conservation, management plans, Brazil, Likert scale, PCA