Albertina P. Lima

• PhD
• Senior Researcher at Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia de Adaptações da Biota Aquática da Amazônia

Poison dart frogs (Dendrobatidae) are known for their aposematic coloration and toxic skin, making them a frequent subject of interest and research. However, descriptions of new species of Ranitomeya were interrupted for more than a decade. The implementation of a RAPELD (Rapid Assessment surveys of Long-Term Ecological Research) module in the Juru...

The genus Ranitomeya has 16 known species, and the last of them was described 13 years ago. The forests of the Juruá River basin are known for their enormous vertebrate diversity, despite being one of the least sampled regions in the entire Amazonia. Our recent expeditions to the region resulted in the discovery of a Ranitomeya species with blue-gr...

Understanding changes in species composition due to human‐induced habitat modification and environmental filtering is essential for formulating effective conservation strategies. Species turnover resulting from reduced‐impact logging (RIL) is expected in the short term, generally with species adapted to open areas replacing those dependent on old‐g...

Amazonia continuously reveals outstanding biotic diversity and endemism, but our comprehension regarding their underlying processes has been impaired by knowledge gaps on cryptic taxonomic diversity. Here, we clarified the diversity and historical biogeography of nurse-frogs typical from Brazilian Southwestern Amazonia, the Allobates tinae species...

Dendrobatid frogs are famous for their amazing body design colours and poisonous skin. The male perspective is the focus of most studies, with males known as caregivers, persistent singers, and assiduous flirts. Little is known about what females do other than reproduce or very rarely be territorial and care for their tadpoles. Two interesting ques...

Amazonian white-sand ecosystems have predominantly sandy soils and a high amount of endemism, and several species found within them are adapted to long periods of drought. However, little is known about the variation in the structure of anuran assemblages in these ecosystems. Considering that most species are not uniformly distributed in heterogene...

The lack of synthesized information regarding biodiversity is a major problem among researchers, leading to a pervasive cycle where ecologists make field campaigns to collect information that already exists and yet has not been made available for a broader audience. This problem leads to long-lasting effects in public policies such as spending mone...

The lack of synthesized information regarding biodiversity is a major problem among researchers, leading to a pervasive cycle where ecologists make field campaigns to collect information that already exists and yet has not been made available for a broader audience. This problem leads to long-lasting effects in public policies such as spending mone...

The lack of synthesized information regarding biodiversity is a major problem among researchers, leading to a pervasive cycle where ecologists make field campaigns to collect information that already exists and yet has not been made available for a broader audience. This problem leads to long-lasting effects in public policies such as spending mone...

Forest structure plays an important role in determining habitat suitability for plants and animals, but these relationships are poorly characterized for different biological communities in tropical forests. We used ground-based lidar to quantify structural metrics and determine their contribution in predicting species diversity and compositional ch...

River damming by hydroelectric plants interrupts the continuity of rivers and causes the flooding of adjacent terrestrial ecosystems. Assessments of the impacts of major hydroelectric dams on species and the functional responses of communities to flooding are scarce. We used data from eight years of forest monitoring around a - 100-km section of th...

Generally, competition excludes pairs of phylogenetically close species across the landscape. However, habitat, food and behaviour differentiation facilitate co‐occurrence of syntopic species. The taxa of frog‐biting midges Corethrella are assumed to be specialists on calling male frogs, but little is known about how habitat gradients and frog‐spec...

Além das Fronteiras: Expedição na busca por novas espécies de sapos nos Rios Juruá, Eiru e Gregório Nesta expedição, exploramos as regiões remotas do interior da Amazônia em busca de novas espécies de sapos. Nos 40 dias de percurso focamos nossas buscas no município de Eirunepé em trechos dos rios Juruá, Eiru e Gregório.

By using integrative taxonomy, we describe a new species of terrestrial foam-nesting frog of the genus Adenomera from white-sand forests of the Rio Negro Sustainable Development Reserve, Central Amazonia, Brazil. Within the A. andreae clade, the new species belongs to the A. simonstuarti complex where it is sister to the lineage from the lower Juru...

The accumulation of studies delimiting species in Amazonia has not only shed light on the patterns of its outstanding species richness but also allowed a better understanding of the processes of diversification within this immense region. Nevertheless, vast knowledge gaps remain even for prominent anuran species complexes, such as the Rhinella marg...

O objetivo desse livro é apresentar para estudantes, ecoturistas e moradores locais que moram ou visitam o Rio Negro, um pouco sobre as incríveis relações entre os seres vivos, solo e água que sustentam as florestas nesta região.

In this study, we test the hypothesis that, at a fine‐scale, environmental variables influence differently sister species that live in sympatry and are phylogenetically closely related. We sampled two Amazonian anuran species, Phyzelaphryne miriamae and Phyzelaphryne sp., in 11 permanent sampling modules distributed across ~600 km in the Purus‐Made...

Taxonomic uncertainty at the species level compromises our knowledge of biodiversity, conservation, and systematics. The impact of such uncertainty is heightened in megadiverse regions such as Amazonia due to high levels of cryptic diversity. We used integrative taxonomy based on newly collected topotypical specimens to redescribe the Amazonian nur...

Much of the remarkable beta diversity of the Amazon biome is associated with the variety of vegetation types and other broad environmental gradients. We investigated ant assemblages in white-sand vegetation, one of the most distinctive vegetation types in the Amazon. Using pitfall traps in trees and on the ground, we comprehensively surveyed the an...

The objective of this book is to introduce to students, ecotourists, and residents who live or visit the Rio Negro a little about the incredible relationships between living beings, soil, and water that sustain the forests in this region.

We use integrative taxonomy to formally describe a candidate species of nurse frog of the genus Allobates from southwestern Brazilian Amazonia. The new species nests within a clade that has been defined historically as A. gasconi, but it has an 8.8-11.0% genetic distance for 16S to samples from the type locality of A. gasconi. The new species diffe...

Savanna ecosystems are maintained by fires with a fire-adapted biota, and savannas occur in Amazonia in patches surrounded by tropical forest. Different fire regimes can generate structurally diverse vegetation, and the composition of savanna bird assemblages is known to be closely related to vegetation structure. However, long-term approaches and...

Taxonomic uncertainty at the species level compromises our knowledge of biodiversity, conservation and systematics. The impact of such uncertainty is heightened in megadiverse regions such as Amazonia due to high levels of cryptic diversity. We used integrative taxonomy based on newly collected topotypical specimens to redescribe the Amazonian nurs...

The white-sand ecosystems in the Solimões-Negro Interfluve are among the less studied in Amazonia. Recent herpetological surveys conducted west of Manaus, Brazil (central Amazonia) indicate that white-sand forests host a unique anuran fauna comprising habitat specialized and endemic species. In the present study we describe a new species of rain fr...

The recognition and use of food resources in animal species may vary according to availability. Trophic niche and resource availability are among the most important drivers involved in the coexistence of species, which may require specific resources or exploit a large variety of resources. Dung beetle species feed from a wide range of food resource...

The Acoustic Adaptation Hypothesis (AAH) predicts that acoustic signals emitted at sites with greater vegetation density should have spectral and temporal characteristics that increase signal transmission, but there is a pleiotropism related to body size: large animals produce signals with lower frequency. We used 238 advertisement calls of 34 popu...

Moia Humaitá kavyra porá é uma versão traduzida para língua indígena Tupi-Kagwahiva do livro "Cobras venenosas e espécies semelhantes na região de Humaitá".

Tradução do livro "Cobras Venenosas e Espécies Semelhantes na Região de Humaitá" para a língua índigena Tupi-Kagwahiva

Kurua Humaitá Kavyra Porá é uma versão traduzida para a língua indígena Tupi-Kagwahiva do livro "Sapos da região de Humaitá - Uma introdução à diversidade de sapos para estudantes e ecoturistas".

Aim: Distinguishing ecological and evolutionary processes that structure assemblages can provide a comprehensive vision of the variation in species turnover in heterogeneous regions. However, the causes of spatial variation in organism assemblies in most of the Amazon still require further studies. In view of this, our objective was to determine th...

Anuran amphibians have intensively been studied to understand Amazonian biodiversity. Improved methods and sampling has revealed that many widespread nominal species in fact are complexes of species with smaller allopatric ranges. Pan-Amazonian anuran species are rather an exception. In a case study using the three-striped poison frog (Anura: Dendr...

Amazon forests are being degraded by myriad anthropogenic disturbances, altering ecosystem and climate function. We analyzed the effects of a range of land‐use and climate‐change disturbances on fine‐scale canopy structure using a large database of profiling canopy lidar collected from disturbed and mature Amazon forest plots. At most of the distur...

O objetivo desse livro é apresentar para estudantes, ecoturistas e moradores locais que moram ou visitam o Rio Negro, um pouco sobre as incríveis relações entre os seres vivos, solo e água que sustentam as florestas nesta região.

Infectious diseases are one of the main threats to biodiversity. The fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) is associated with several amphibian losses around the globe, and environmental conditions may dictate the success of pathogen spread. The Brazilian Amazon has been considered climatically unsuitable for chytrid fungus, but additional inf...

Pristimantis is already the most speciose genus among vertebrates, yet the current number of species remains largely underestimated. A member of the P. unistrigatus species group from the Guiana Shield has been historically misidentified as P. ockendeni , a species described from southern Peru. We combined mitochondrial (16S and COI) and nuclear (R...

Determining the relative importance of dispersal and vicariance events across neotropical regions is a major goal in biogeography. These events are thought to be related to important landscape changes, notably the transition of Amazonia toward its modern hydrological configuration ca. 10 million years ago. We investigated the spatio-temporal contex...

The guide of "Poisonous snakes and similar species in the Humaitá region", is mainly focused on the venomous snakes of the region, which may eventually pose danger to people. But we hope it also serves to show that most snake species are harmless and deserve our admiration and respect.

A maioria são espécies de cobras corais que raramente picam pessoas. As cobras corais costumam ser inofensivas, elas evitam pessoas e geralmente mordem se forem capturadas ou pisoteadas por uma pessoa. Mordidas por cobras jararacas, surucucu-pico-de-jaca, e cascavel são mais comuns, porque elas costumam se defender com um bote quando se sentem amea...

Cryptic diversity is extremely common in widespread Amazonian anurans, but especially in nurse frogs of the genus Allobates . There is an urgent need to formally describe the many distinct but unnamed species, both to enable studies of their basic biology but especially to facilitate conservation of threatened environments in which many are found....

Many anuran species remain to be formally named and described in Amazonia, notably in the Guiana Shield, and particularly in megadiverse groups such as Pristimantis. Several species in the Guiana Shield region have been confused with Pristi- mantis marmoratus and P. ockendeni. Hylodes grandoculis, a taxon previously placed in the synonymy of P. mar...

Knowledge of genome-wide variation and the processes influencing gene flow are critical to managing threatened species. Here, we characterise genetic diversity and the environmental features associated with connectivity for a narrowly distributed and threatened Amazonian frog, Atelopus manauensis. We sampled 94 individuals throughout the upper, mid...

Many dendrobatid frogs are known to be aposematic: brightly coloured and unpalatable to predators. To deceive predators, frog models used to test for predatory colour bias must be similar in size, colour, shape, and movement to frogs. We carried out an experiment with moving models of the species Adelphobates galactonotus , in two localities. A. ga...

Understory palms are subject to different ecological pressures than those experienced by canopy palms, but most studies do not distinguish between understory and canopy palms, or include only canopy palms. Much of the variation in the taxonomic composition of understory palms in the Amazon is concentrated in riparian zones. However, abiotic charact...

Recent studies have showed that several species of frogs previously thought to be widespread throughout Amazonia are species complexes with each individual species displaying smaller geographic ranges and that only a small fraction of Amazonian frogs are indeed widely distributed. Evaluating cryptic diversity within these complexes and describing a...

The high biodiversity of the Amazon region is related to variation in soil physical properties and water-table depths. Dung beetles are efficient bioindicators that feed and breed on the soil surface and below ground, affecting soil properties and being affected by them. Here, we investigate the influence of soil physical characteristics (proportio...

A Floresta Nacional do Tapajós, Pará, Brasil faz parte do circuito de passeios oferecidos na região, e por isso é frequentemente visitada por turistas. Sapos são animais atrativos para o ecoturismo na Amazônia, devido à enorme variedade de formas, tamanhos e cores, e porque algumas espécies compõem lendas tradicionais e rituais indígenas. Este gui...

Abstract A few decades ago, researchers from the National Institute for Amazonian Research (INPA) started a pilot study to integrate the ecological studies of several organisms using monitoring plots, which then became the embryo for the creation of the RAPELD (Rapid Assessments and Long-term Ecological Research) system used by the Program for Biod...

Biological assemblages are often predictable from knowledge of natural environmental heterogeneity and change in response to anthropogenic disturbances, such as deforestation, so understanding ecological mechanisms and processes mediating assemblages is essential to direct conservation actions. We sampled frogs along an edaphic and vegetation‐struc...

One of the many taxonomic challenges found in the Dendropsophus microcephalus species group is the Dendropsophus walfordi distinction from D. nanus. Recent phylogenetic inferences have indicated the paraphyly of these species, although they were not designed to assess this issue. To contribute to the delimitation of these species, we analyzed the 1...

Vídeo produzido para promover a popularização do conteúdo do artigo científico Torralvo et al. 2021, em linguagem simples, narrado e ilustrado (em PT).- Download abaixo./ Video produced to promote the popularization of science, ilustrating the results from the scientific article Torralvo et al. 2021, using simple language narrated in PT.- Download...

Amazonian savannas are isolated patches of open habitats within an array of extensive tropical forest. The mammal fauna of the savannas in the Alter do Chão region (Santarém Municipality), is dominated by Necromys lasiurus, whose populations have been studied by researchers of the National Institute of Amazonian Research since 1983. Here, we summar...

About 90% of the Amazon’s energy potential remains unexploited, with many large hydroelectric dams yet to be built, so it is important to understand how terrestrial vertebrates are affected by reservoir formation and habitat loss. We investigated the influence of the construction of the Santo Antônio Hydroelectric dam on the Madeira River in southw...

Integrative analyses, long-term studies, and access to remote areas in Amazonia have led to new hypotheses and increased resolution of the systematics and taxonomy of the small nurse frog genus Allobates (family Aromobatidae). During anuran sampling in the Middle Tapajós River region, state of Pará, Brazil, we collected data on a new cryptically co...

In poison frogs (Dendrobatoidea), usually the males are territorial, care for terrestrial nests and later transport their offspring to waterbodies where they complete larval development. In some species, mothers care for their offspring or may exhibit flexible care to compensate for father absence. We conducted a multi-season field experiment with...

The effect of large Amazonian rivers as barriers to distribution of species and gene flow has been the subject of debate for more than a century. The Madeira River is the largest tributary of the Amazon River, with the region comprising its basin undergoing complex changes from the Pliocene through the Holocene. Accordingly, the evolution of its dr...

The outstanding species richness of Amazonia has fascinated biologists for centuries. However, the records of actual numbers and distribution of species forming its ecosystems are so incomplete that the understanding of the historical causes and regional determinants of this diversity remain speculative. Anuran clades have repeatedly been documente...

Geographical and environmental distances influence the divergence of characters among biological populations, especially on a macro spatial scale, making it difficult to interpret the individual contribution of these predictor variables in the process of population differentiation. Anurans are excellent models for multi-character evolutionary studi...

A contentious aspect in dendrobatoid frog behaviour is the recognition of the predominant factor—if any—driving male mating success. This is probably related to an extensive correlation among different male quality predictors. Here, we investigated the diurnal and territorial nurse frog Allobates subfolionidificans by means of a field study during...

A large proportion of the biodiversity of Amazonia, one of the most diverse rainforest areas in the world, is yet to be formally described. One such case is the Neotropical frog genus Adenomera. We here evaluate the species richness and historical biogeography of the Adenomera heyeri clade by integrating molecular phylogenetic and species delimitat...

We describe through integrative taxonomy a new Amazonian species of leaf-litter toad of the Rhinella margaritifera species group. The new species inhabits open lowland forest in southwest Amazonia in Brazil, Peru, and Bolivia. It is closely related to a Bolivian species tentatively identified as Rhinella cf. paraguayensis. Both the new species and...

Global climate drivers often have strong effects on the carrying capacity of animal populations, but little is known about how effects differ between regional and local scales. In this paper we evaluated how climate variables were correlated with regional and local fluctuations of a small rodent, Necromys lasiurus, in an Amazonian savanna. Between...

Extracts made from the skin of dead Lithodytes lineatus frog individuals with the application of the benzocaine-based anesthetic gel, introduced into the oral cavity, were analyzed by ¹H Nuclear Magnetic Resonance to investigate whether the application of this product (oral) can make studies that use extracts from the skins of these animals unfeasi...

Ecological succession in tropical savannas is limited by seasonal fire, which affects habitat quality. Although fire may cause negligible or positive effects on animals occupying savannas, most short-term studies (months to a few years) are based on a single temporal sampling snapshot, and long-term studies (decades) are rare. We sampled four lizar...

Nurse frogs (Aromobatidae: Allobates) are probably the most extensively studied genus by taxonomists in Brazilian Amazonia. The southwestern portion of Amazonia is the most species-rich: as many as seven species may occur in sympatry at a single locality. In this study, we describe a new species of nurse frog from this region. The description integ...

The small size, low vagility, territoriality, and reproductive mode of some Amazonian frogs undermine the wide geographical distribution assigned to them. Species with these features represent excellent models for testing the existence of cryptic diversity in widely distributed species. The nurse frog Allobates tinae has recently been described as...

Biogeographic barriers such as rivers have been shown to shape spatial patterns of biodiversity in the Amazon basin, yet relatively little is known about the distribution of genetic variation across continuous rainforest. Here, we characterize the genetic structure of the brilliant-thighed poison frog (Allobates femoralis) across an 880 km long tra...

Aim We investigate the spatiotemporal context of the diversification of Allobates, a widespread genus of Amazonian frogs with high species diversity particularly in western Amazonia. We tested if that diversity originated in situ or through repeated dispersals from other Amazonian areas and if this diversification took place during or after the Peb...

We used integrative taxonomy to describe a new species of Atelopus from the lowlands of Central Amazonia in the region of Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil. The new species is geographically isolated from the southernmost species of Atelopus of the Guiana Shield. Atelopus manauensis species nova (sp. nov.) is characterized by the combination of the followin...

Adenomera simonstuarti is a poorly known species complex inhabiting western Amazonia. Here we reevaluate the species diversity within this complex based on previously documented and newly acquired molecular and phenotypic data. We also redescribe the calling pattern of the nominal species based on the original recording (Peru) and a new recording (...

Recent studies have shown that species diversity of the South American frog genus Dendropsophus is significantly underestimated, especially in Amazonia. Herein, through integrative taxonomy a new species of Dendropsophus from the east bank of the upper Madeira River, Brazil is described. Based on molecular phylogenetic and morphological analyses, t...

Pouco se conhece sobre os efeitos de longo prazo do fogo sobre a composição florística das savanas amazônicas isoladas. Dados do regime de queimadas foram coletados entre 1997 e 2017 e relacionados à composição florística em parcelas de 3,75 hectares distribuídos por 10.000 hectares de savana na região de Alter do Chão-PA, como parte das pesquisas...

Investigating the role of historical and ecological factors structuring assemblages is relevant to understand mechanisms and processes affecting biodiversity across heterogeneous habitats. Considering that community assembly often involves scale-dependent processes, different spatial scales may reveal distinct factors structuring assemblages. In th...

The Manaus harlequin frog is an evolutionarily significant clade within the Atelopus hoogmoedi species complex. Analyses of 16S and COI concatenated sequences support Atelopus from the Manaus region as an evolutionary significant unit, sister of all species of a Guiana Shield clade. A previous study showed that subtle changes in stream characterist...