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Alumni Publications
Miranda, R. J., Nunes, J. A. C. C., Creed, J. C., Barros, F., Macieira, R. M. M., Santos, R. G., ... & Pereira, P. H. C. (2020). Brazil policy invites marine invasive species. Science, 368 (6490), pp. 481.
Invasive species threaten biodiversity and ecosystem function and can affect human well-being and services. In November 2019, Brazil's Tourism Ministry launched a plan to sink 1200 scrapped ships, trains, and airplanes, most of them inside marine protected areas (MPAs), supposedly to promote diving tourism business. Artificial reefs, such as those that would be created by sinking these vehicles, are used by invading species as stepping-stones to natural reefs, causing ecological, social, and economic deterioration. This plan, if implemented, would undermine efforts to attain Convention on Biological Diversity and National Environmental Policy Act targets.
Sales, N. G., Kaizer, M. D. C., Coscia, I., Perkins, J. C., Highlands, A., Boubli, J. P., ... & Mcdevitt, A. D. (2020). Assessing the potential of environmental DNA metabarcoding for monitoring Neotropical mammals: a case study in the Amazon and Atlantic Forest, Brazil. Mammal Review
The application of environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding as a biomonitoring tool has greatly increased, but studies have focused on temperate aquatic macro‐organisms. We apply eDNA metabarcoding to detecting the mammalian community in two high‐biodiversity regions of Brazil: the Amazon and Atlantic Forests. We identified Critically Endangered and Endangered mammalian species and found overlap with species identified via camera trapping. We highlight the potential for using eDNA monitoring for mammals in biodiverse regions and identify challenges: we need a better understanding of the ecology of eDNA within variable environments and more appropriate reference sequences for species identification in these anthropogenically impacted biomes.
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