Ana Malhado

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

PhD

About

154
Publications
67,945
Reads
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5,023
Citations
Additional affiliations
June 2011 - present
Universidade Federal de Alagoas
Position
  • Pesquisadora
March 2009 - December 2011
Universidade Federal de Viçosa (UFV)
Position
  • Posdoc Researcher
June 2004 - December 2008
University of Oxford
Position
  • Administrator

Publications

Publications (154)
Article
Full-text available
Curiosity is one of the most striking traits of children, who eagerly question the world around them. However, this interest tends to wane over time if not nurtured. At the same time, many scientists lack the motivation and training to effectively communicate their findings to a diverse audience.The "Criança com Ciência" (Children with Science) pro...
Article
Full-text available
The collection "Stories to Colour the Soul" was created to bring positive environmental conservation narratives to children. Using a playful approach, the stories immerse children in the experiences of various natural entities, encouraging reflection on the human connection with the environment. Each narrative features biodiversity protagonists suc...
Article
Full-text available
Aim Human land‐use and climate change are two of the main threats affecting biodiversity, especially in arid/semiarid regions. The most effective way to protect the species in these ecosystems against these threats is through the delimitation of protected areas (PAs). However, such PAs need to be targeted cost‐efficiently and consider future climat...
Article
Protected areas (PAs) play a vital role in the conservation of natural and cultural heritage while supporting local livelihoods. However, in Brazil, where limited resources and poor effectiveness lead to negative sentiments and are leveraged as criticism towards PAs, it is necessary to better comprehend public perceptions of Brazilian PAs and ident...
Article
Many organisms will respond to climate change by shifting their ranges while pursuing potential climatically suitable areas. Predicting these area changes is important, especially in dry areas such as the Brazilian semiarid biome, the Caatinga. Here we identified which Caatinga areas would be climatically suitable for small mammal species under dif...
Article
Adaptive management Community based management Environmental protection area costa dos corais A B S T R A C T The attitudes of local residents living adjacent to Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) can influence the effectiveness of conservation management and practices, such as acceptance of the protected area rules and the willingness to participate in...
Preprint
Full-text available
Community-based conservation has gained traction in the Brazilian Amazon due to its potential in combining territorial protection, local well-being, and biodiversity conservation. Here, we conducted an innovative assessment of the effective protection footprint of the largest community-based fisheries conservation arrangement in the Amazon. Local c...
Article
Full-text available
Social media platforms are a valuable source of data for investigating cultural and political trends related to 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 to al...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
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,...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
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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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Preprint
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
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...
Article
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...
Preprint
Full-text available
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...
Article
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...
Article
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...
Article
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...
Article
Full-text available
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,...
Article
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...
Article
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...
Article
Full-text available
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....
Article
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Book
Full-text available
A coletânea "Histórias de colorir a alma", produzida pelo Laboratório de Conservação do Século XXI (LACOS 21), surgiu com o propósito de levar até o público infantil histórias de conservação do meio ambiente de uma forma lúdica e divertida, apresentando a perspectiva de diversos seres da natureza. A leitura deste livro é como uma janela que se abr...
Book
Full-text available
A coletânea "Histórias de colorir a alma", produzida pelo Laboratório de Conservação do Século XXI (LACOS 21), surgiu com o propósito de levar até o público infantil histórias de conservação do meio ambiente de uma forma lúdica e divertida, apresentando a perspectiva de diversos seres da natureza. A leitura deste livro é como uma janela que se abr...
Book
Full-text available
A coletânea "Histórias de colorir a alma", produzida pelo Laboratório de Conservação do Século XXI (LACOS 21), surgiu com o propósito de levar até o público infantil histórias de conservação do meio ambiente de uma forma lúdica e divertida, apresentando a perspectiva de diversos seres da natureza. A leitura deste livro é como uma janela que se abr...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
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...
Article
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
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...
Preprint
Full-text available
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...
Preprint
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...
Article
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...
Poster
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...
Article
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
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...
Article
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...
Article
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...
Article
Full-text available
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