Ana Malhado

Universidade Federal de Alagoas · Institute of Biological Sciences and Health (ICBS)

Human responses to impending extinctions are complex, highly dependent on cultural and socioeconomic context, and have typically been far less studied than the ecological and genetic aspects of extinction. Specifically, the way in which science and societies respond to population decline, extirpation, and species extinction can also have a profound...

Artisanal fishing is the main economic and cultural livelihood on the Brazilian coast, strongly contributing to the well-being of fishing communities. However, access to these benefits depends on both local governance and the availability of resources. Here, we investigate Brazilian artisanal fishers' perceptions of cultural, economic, governance,...

Here we provide the ‘Global Spectrum of Plant Form and Function Dataset’, containing species mean values for six vascular plant traits. Together, these traits –plant height, stem specific density, leaf area, leaf mass per area, leaf nitrogen content per dry mass, and diaspore (seed or spore) mass – define the primary axes of variation in plant form...

Resumo A participação da sociedade nas arenas de tomada das decisões é fundamental para alcançar uma gestão ambiental efetiva. Este trabalho buscou avaliar a efetividade da inclusão, enquanto princípio de boa governança, no Conselho gestor da Área de Proteção Ambiental (APA) Costa dos Corais. Para isso, foram analisados documentos institucionais, r...

The participation of society in the decision-making arenas is essential to achieve an effective environmental management. This paper aimed to assess the effectiveness of inclusion, as a principle of good governance, in the decision-making process of the Costa dos Corais Environmental Protected Area (EPA). To achieve it, institutional documents were...

Background Terrestrial biomes in South America are likely to experience a persistent increase in environmental temperature, possibly combined with moisture reduction due to climate change. In addition, natural fire ignition sources, such as lightning, can become more frequent under climate change scenarios since favourable environmental conditions...

The Caatinga is an exclusively Brazilian biome, and is the largest and most biodiverse Seasonal Tropical Dry Forest in the world. Despite that, the mammalian fauna, especially small mammals, is the least studied of all Brazilian biomes. In order to fill gaps and provide detailed information on small mammals (Didelphimorphia, Rodentia) in the Caatin...

Social media data is a rich source of information to assess human activities in catastrophic events. Here, we use social media data to understand how the 2019 Brazilian oil spill influenced social attitudes. Data were collected from the globally popular Instagram platform between August 1, 2019 and March 1, 2020. First, we manually identified the 5...

Social media platforms are a valuable source of data for investigating cultural and political trends related to the public interest in nature and conservation. Here, we use the micro-blogging social network Twitter to explore trends in public interest in Brazilian protected areas (PAs). We identified ~400,000 Portuguese language tweets pertaining t...

Oil pollution has signifi cantly contributed to coral reef decline in the last fi ve decades and a major oil spill reached Brazilian tropical coast in August 2019. Here, we report the fi rst evidence of direct crude oil contact from that spill on reef coral species, and evaluate the effects of this disaster on coral vitality and benthic assemblage...

The extensive oil spill (> 2,900 km) that occurred in the southwestern Atlantic (2019/2020) increased the vulnerability of the Brazilian coast, affecting marine and coastal protected areas (MPAs). In addition to supporting conservation, MPAs are sustainably used by local populations to help maintain ocean-dependent livelihoods. In this sense, we ai...

In August 2019, the Northeast coast of Brazil was impacted by an extensive oil spill, with immediate effects on marine and coastal ecosystems and signifi cant impacts on tourism and food security. The human dimension of those impacts also includes the loss of cultural ecosystem services (CES); the non-material benefi ts stemming from strongly roote...

An extensive network of Protected Areas (PA) has been established across the Brazilian Amazon, but this PA system still suffers from a shortage of funding resources and environmental managers. New conservation strategies that successfully align social aspirations with biodiversity conservation are therefore imperative. Although approaches exist tha...

Continental runoff is an important source of solutes and nutrients to coastal coral reefs. Nevertheless, they can also act as local stressors due to high coastal urbanization and associated release of untreated effluents. Here we aimed to evaluate qualitatively the effects of seasonality over reefs from the Costa dos Corais Marine Protected Area (B...

Climate change will likely increase the frequency and magnitude of wildfires, imposing novel stressors on biodiversity and ecosystem services. By focusing on Brazilian biomes, we use an innovative combination of techniques based on satellite-derived climate predictors and fire occurrence time-series data to quantify the relationship between climate...

Protected areas (PAs) are often seen as opportunity costs and are therefore vulnerable to political decisions that open them up to public or private development initiatives. We reasoned that, ceteris paribus, PAs with high levels of public support should be more resilient to such decisions because; i) politicians in democratic societies are relucta...

Cultural ecosystem services (CES) are benefits that people receive from ecosystems, for example, through spiritual enrichment, cognitive development, recreation, and aesthetic experiences. These are important contributors to human well-being, but are challenging to measure due to their intangible nature and because they may vary spatially depending...

Protected areas (PAs) are the main spatial policy instrument for conserving biodiversity and have expanded dramatically in the last 30 years. This expansion has not been matched by a corresponding increase in financial investment, leaving many parks without sufficient resources for essential management actions. Moreover, in some parts of the world...

Interactions with nature promote key human health benefits and help inform sound conservation actions. During the COVID-19 lockdowns such interactions were reduced and, in many cases, limited to urban nature. Nevertheless, home-confinement regulations may have provided the impetus for people to reconnect with urban wildlife –through their windows,...

In our paper “No visit, no interest: How COVID-19 has affected public interest in world's national parks” (Souza et al., 2021) we use culturomic data and methods to provide a global overview of internet search interest in national parks during and before the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis highlighted steep and widespread declines in searches for...

Protected areas (PAs) are the cornerstone of global conservation policy and have expanded dramatically over the last century. Though unequivocally beneficial for biodiversity, gazetting land for protecting nature can also be seen as an 'opportunity cost' that some politicians are unwilling to pay. One of the most effective strategies to increase th...

Ongoing loss of biological diversity is primarily the result of unsustainable human behavior. Thus, the long-term success of biodiversity conservation depends on a thorough understanding of human-nature interactions. Such interactions are ubiquitous but vary greatly in time and space and are difficult to monitor efficiently at large spatial scales....

In August 2019, a major oil spill hit nine Brazilian coastal states, affecting marine ecosystems and fishing communities. In this study, we assess the immediate social and economic impacts of this oil spill on fishing communities of the northeast coast. We conducted semi-structured interviews and focal meetings with 381 fishers and shellfish gather...

The use of digital content has become a powerful tool to evaluate and track macro-scale trends in human-nature relations. This is an emerging field of study known as conservation culturomics, that seeks to understand human culture through quantitative analysis in large bodies of digital content. Here, we used relative search volume on Google Search...

Environmental filtering has been defined as the effect of environmental gradients on species in a plant community and can be the dominant driver of community assembly. Here, we evaluate the relationship between plant communities and the environment in the Restinga vegetation. For this, we measured 11 functional traits of plant species present along...

As áreas protegidas (APs) são as principais ferramentas capazes de assegurar a preservaçãodos sistemas naturais e sua respectiva biodiversidade, principalmente no caso de áreas com prioridade para conservação, como ocorre com as áreas úmidas. A implementação de APs tem potencial para gerar benefícios fundamentais para proteger paisagens icônicas, e...

Abstract: Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) generates unique data sets that have the potential to identify and quantify trends in ecological processes that may be difficult to detect at lower temporal resolutions. Even though many LTER sites are within protected areas, they do not necessarily produce data that are well aligned with the objective...

Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) aims to monitor natural ecological processes that operate over longer time periods than are typically permitted by standard research grants (e.g. species life cycles, natural resource dynamics, and the ecological effects of climate changes). Despite the enormous success of LTER, many of the initial projects larg...

Scientific knowledge of species and the ecosystems they inhabit is the cornerstone of modern conservation. However, research effort is not spread evenly among taxa (taxonomic bias), which may constrain capacity to identify conservation risk and to implement effective responses. Addressing such biases requires an understanding of factors that promot...

The original version of the article unfortunately contained an error.

The remarkable biodiversity of the Brazilian Amazon is poorly documented and threatened by deforestation. When undocumented areas become deforested, in addition to losing the fauna and flora, we lose the opportunity to know which unique species had occupied a habitat. Here we quantify such knowledge loss by calculating how much of the Brazilian Ama...

Plant traits—the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants—determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research sp...

Aims The survival and distribution of plant species in the extreme environmental conditions of semi-arid regions is strongly dependent on traits associated with drought resistance. Seed weight may be particularly important, since larger seeds are predicted to promote survival in harsh environments, especially those of low soil moisture. Here, we te...

The semi-arid region of Northeast Brazil (NEB) experiences severe droughts during El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) years, with major impacts on the dynamics of the native vegetation (Caatinga). However, the effect of these droughts on carbon cycling is not well understood. Here, a numerical model is used to investigate the influence of variation...

The semi-arid region of Northeast Brazil (NEB) experiences severe droughts during El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) years, with major impacts on the dynamics of the native vegetation (Caatinga). However, the effect of these droughts on carbon cycling is not well understood. Here, a numerical model is used to investigate the influence of variation...

Climate change is a global phenomenon that affects biophysical systems and human well-being. The Paris Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change entered into force in 2016 with the objective of strengthening the global response to climate change by keeping global temperature rise this century well below 2 °C above pre-i...

1. Conservation will only be successful over the long term if people support conservation goals. While many factors may influence the level of such support, it is clear that people are more willing to conserve species and places that they are familiar with and which provide them with something they value. 2. Until now this dimension has been largel...

The Caatinga is an ecologically unique semi-arid region of northeast Brazil characterized by high levels of endemism and severe anthropogenic threats from agricultural development and climate change. It is also one of the least known biomes in Brazil due to a combination of inadequate investment, low regional research capacity and difficult working...

In Brazil most forms of hunting and keeping of wild animals are illegal, although they remain widely practiced and are deeply culturally embedded in many regions. The drivers of such widespread non-compliance are poorly understood and evidence to support future policy decisions is generally lacking. In this paper, we seek to stimulate a critical de...

Protected areas are frequently used loci for ecological and conservation research, with several national/international designations identifying scientific research as a key objective. For example, Ecological Stations (ESs) in Brazil are strictly protected areas with the explicit goals of protecting nature and hosting scientific research. Neverthele...

Humans have become such dominant drivers of planetary changes that scientists are now debating the establishment of a new epoch: the Anthropocene. The concept of the Anthropocene has gained rapid visibility, quickly becoming a trademark of 21st century scientific literature. Interestingly, some studies claim that this idea can be traced back to the...

Culturomics is an emerging area of study that explores human culture through the quantitative analysis of large digital bodies of text. Culturomics shows great potential for the study of public perceptions and engagement with nature and biodiversity, and thus to contribute to the assessment and monitoring of major conservation goals (e.g. Aichi Tar...

Protected areas are often used by scientists to observe natural processes and organisms in habitats that have been minimally influenced by human actions. In contrast to many PA objectives, their effectiveness for promoting and supporting scientific research can be easily quantified in terms of quantity and quality of scientific products (primarily...

Protected areas are often used by scientists to observe natural processes and organisms in habitats that have been minimally influenced by human actions. In contrast to many PA objectives, their effectiveness for promoting and supporting scientific research can be easily quantified in terms of quantity and quality of scientific products (primarily...

Cultural ecosystem services (CES) include non-material values such as recreation, aesthetic enjoyment, and spiritual fulfilment. Such values are culturally specific, and frequently difficult to measure and monetarize. The standard methodology to assess CES is through social surveys, though these are often costly, lack standardization and are geogra...

Assessing public interest in nature is one of the key areas where culturomics shows great potential to contribute towards conservation science and practice. For example, internet search volume data has been suggested as a potential tool for measuring progress towards Aichi Target 1, which states that ‘by 2020, at the latest, people are aware of the...

In a time when protected areas are under increasing societal and political pressure, ensuring their public visibility and support will be essential to guarantee their long-term maintenance. The high levels of societal participation and global reach of emerging digital technologies provide exciting new opportunities to assess the public salience of...

The humid forests of Amazonia are experiencing longer and more intense dry seasons, which are predicted to intensify by the end of the 21st century. Although tree species often have long generation times, they may still have the capacity to rapidly respond to changing climatic conditions through adaptive phenotypic plasticity. We, therefore, predic...

The last 20 years have seen remarkable progress in monitoring and modelling environmental change in the Amazon region. As a result, scientists and policy makers now have robust and spatially explicit knowledge and forecasts of critical phenomena such as deforestation and bioclimatic uncertainty. However, whether this knowledge is used to support th...

Non-compliance with conservation regulations is a key issue for protected area management effectiveness in most parts of the world. Effectively managing such behaviours requires a clear understanding of who is non-compliant, what is driving their non-compliance, and what the likely conservation consequences of compliant and non-compliant behaviours...

Protected areas (PAs) are the main strategy to conserve natural values and reduce biodiversity loss. However, with increasing global food requirements, using land for protecting landscapes and species is becoming increasingly difficult to justify. Here, we argue that framing PAs as spatial assets provides an ideal platform for generating investment...

Global warming in the first half of the 21st century is likely to have profound influences on South American vegetation and climate. Although coupled atmosphere-biosphere models have been widely used to forecast future vegetation patterns under various scenarios of global warming, they have not been used to assess the potentially critical role of v...

Public interest in nature is an important driver of the success of conservation actions, such that increasing public awareness of biodiversity has become a major conservation goal (i.e. Aichi Target 1). Macro-scale monitoring of public interest towards nature has thus far been difficult, but the enormous quantity of information generated by the int...

The Caatinga is a botanically unique semi-arid ecosystem in northeast Brazil whose vegetation is adapted to the periodic droughts that characterize this region. However, recent extreme droughts events caused by anthropogenic climate change have challenged its ecological resilience. Here, we evaluate how deforestation and protection status affect th...

Cultural ecosystem services (CES) are “non-material benefits people obtain from ecosystems”. These benefits include recreation, aesthetic enjoyment, and spiritual fulfillment arising from the interaction between cultural and natural features. In this chapter, we describe the role of the Caatinga—a unique semiarid region located in northeast Brazil—...

During a time of intensifying competition for land, Protected Areas (PAs) are coming under increasing pressure to justify their status. Positive local attitudes to a PA are a potentially important component of any such justification, especially in the developing world where human pressure on natural resources is often high. However, despite numerou...

Protected areas (PAs) are under increasing pressure to demonstrate their broader value and contribution to society. Scientific research and associated knowledge production comprise one such value, which has received relatively little attention in the academic literature. Here, we use the Amazon region as a case study to quantify scientific knowledg...

Culturomics is an emerging field of study that seeks to understand human culture through the quantitative analysis of changes in word frequencies in large bodies of digital texts. Culturomics research can help nature conservation respond to cultural trends, building and reinvigorating its societal relevance. We identify five areas where culturomics...

This study assessed the influence of the seasonal fluctuation of abiotic conditions (wet v. dry season) on the functional diversity (FD) of tropical coastal fish assemblages. Sampling was carried out in three regions of north-east Brazil with contrasting coastlines (influenced by reef, lagoon and estuary). In each region, fishes were sampled from t...

Spatial and temporal biases in species-occurrence data can compromise broad-scale biogeographical research and conservation planning. Although spatial biases have been frequently scrutinized, temporal biases and the overall quality of species-occurrence data have received far less attention. This study aims to answer three questions: (1) How reliab...