Camila Cherem Ribas

Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia | inpa · Coordenação de Biodiversidade (CBIO)

The Amazon River is the longest river in the world flowing from the Peruvian Andes to the large Amazonian floodplain. The elevation gradient has a huge role in “pushing” waters from source to sink. It transports a huge amount of water (6.62 × 1012 L/year) to the ocean, and the eroded material from the basin (>1.0 × 109 t/year as particles and >270...

Understanding the role of open vegetation, particularly in white-sand ecosystems (WSE) and savannas, is crucial for elucidating their role in Amazonian biotic diversification. These ecosystems predominantly develop on sandy terrains, suggesting that the geological substrate significantly influences the vegetation upon it. Therefore, the interaction...

Hydroelectric dams, once seen as clean and renewable energy sources, have been the subject of extensive research, particularly concerning their socio-environmental impacts. The Belo Monte Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP) relies on the operation of two dams, diverting water from a 130 km stretch of the Xingu River to generate energy, disrupting the n...

The Amazonian river-floodplain systems face unprecedented threats from the construction of hydroelectric power plants aimed at meeting Brazil's energy demands. However, evidence suggests that the long-term economic, social, and environmental damages outweigh the hydroelectricity advantages. The Volta Grande do Xingu was dammed and its water diverte...

Tradução de: Pezzuti, J.C.B., J. Zuanon, P.F.M. Lopes, C.C. Carneiro, A.O. Sawakuch, T.R. Montovanelli, A. Akama, C.C. Ribas, D. Juruna & P.M. Fearnside. 2024. Brazil’s Belo Monte license renewal and the need to recognize the immense impacts of dams in Amazonia. Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation 22(2): 112-117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.peco...

Amazon river floodplains sustain distinct kinds of seasonally flooded habitats along with their specialized biota. River sediment load and geomorphology determine vegetation physiognomy and the occurrence of specialized taxa. Hydropower dams disrupt the annual flooding cycle, affecting the floodplain habitats and associated avifauna. Our goal was t...

Amazonia (defined herein as the Amazon basin) is home to the greatest concentration of biodiversity on Earth, providing unique genetic resources and ecological functions that contribute to ecosystem services globally. The lengthy and complex evolutionary history of this region has produced heterogeneous landscapes and riverscapes at multiple scales...

Lula’s presidency in Brazil offers great hope for the environment but plans for hydroelectric dams in Amazonia represent an area of concern. The Belo Monte hydroelectric power plant that Lula promoted in his previous administrations and still defends illustrates the contradictions. In 2015 Belo Monte diverted water from the Xingu River through a ca...

Tradução de: Brazil’s Belo Monte license renewal and the need to recognize the immense impacts of dams in Amazonia. Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pecon.2024.05.001 [open access]

Aim The central and western Amazonia underwent several landscape changes during the Quaternary. Whereas the Riverine Barrier Hypothesis is traditionally used to explain the influence of rivers on speciation, processes such as river rearrangements have been overlooked to explain the geographic distribution and evolutionary history of Amazonia biota....

Phylogeographic studies of Amazonian birds have revealed large intraspecific diversity, even within recognized areas of endemism. To understand the origin and organization of Amazonian diversity, including the influence of recent history and current landscape, we need to evaluate fine scale patterns of genetic diversity in relation to detailed envi...

The annual flooding cycle of Amazonian rivers sustains the largest floodplains on Earth, which harbour a unique bird community. Recent studies suggest that habitat specialization drove different patterns of population structure and gene flow in floodplain birds. However, the lack of a direct estimate of habitat affinity prevents a proper test of it...

Our understanding of Amazonian biogeography is quickly increasing, catalyzed by the growing use of genomic datasets, improved knowledge of species distributions, and the accumulation of new data on the geological and climatic history of the region. The high number of species in Amazonia and their intricate patterns of geographic distribution trigge...

A iniciativa Diálogos entre Saberes por uma Amazônia que Queremos oferece uma oportunidade única de disseminar as mensagens principais do Relatório para um público mais amplo através de uma linguagem mais acessível. Nesta iniciativa, SPA & Bori e a Nexo Políticas Públicas uniram suas habilidades em ciência e comunicação para amplificar a ciência so...

Areas of endemism are the smallest units in biogeography and can be defined as biologically unique areas comprising taxa with common geographic limits to their distributions. High beta diversity within Amazonia is often related to turnover among these areas. For decades, evolutionary biologists have tried to comprehend the mechanisms generating and...

Aim Western Amazonia is a region that underwent several landscape changes during the Quaternary. While Riverine Barrier Hypothesis is traditionally used to explain the influence of rivers on speciation, processes such as river rearrangements have been overlooked to explain the geographic distribution and evolutionary history of the Amazonia biota....

Aim The drivers of genetic diversity in Amazonia, the most species‐rich set of ecosystems on Earth, are still incompletely understood. Species from distinct Amazonian ecosystems have unique biogeographic histories that will reflect regional landscape and climatic drivers of genetic diversity. We studied bird species from patchy Amazonian white‐sand...

Understanding the factors that govern variation in genetic structure across species is key to the study of speciation and population genetics. Genetic structure has been linked to several aspects of life history, such as foraging strategy, habitat association, migration distance, and dispersal ability, all of which might influence dispersal and gen...

A major barrier to advancing ornithology is the systemic exclusion of professionals from the Global South. A recent special feature, Advances in Neotropical Ornithology, and a shortfalls analysis therein, unintentionally followed a long-standing pattern of highlighting individuals, knowledge, and views from the Global North, while largely omitting...

In this Review, we compare rates of anthropogenic and natural environmental changes in the Amazon and South America and in the larger Earth system. We focus on deforestation and carbon cycles because of their critical roles on the Amazon and Earth systems. We found that rates of anthropogenic processes that affect Amazonian ecosystems are up to hun...

Wallace, who independently discovered the theory of evolution, relied on local knowledge to craft his seminal work on species ranges in the Amazon. Now, the region’s Indigenous scientists have taken charge of their research using this and other cross-cultural tools. Wallace, who independently discovered the theory of evolution, relied on local know...

Abstract Although vicariant processes are expected to leave similar genomic signatures among co‐distributed taxa, ecological traits such as habitat and stratum can influence genetic divergence within species. Here, we combined landscape history and habitat specialization to understand the historical and ecological factors responsible for current le...

Aim The distribution and connectivity of floodplain environments along major Amazonian rivers changed considerably over time following physiographic and climatic events. However, how historical alteration in floodplain habitats affected endemic species' demography and diversification is not fully understood. We tested if historical demographic chan...

Spatial arrangement of distinct Amazonian environments through time and its effect on specialized biota remain poorly known, fueling long-lasting debates about drivers of biotic diversification. We address the late Quaternary sediment deposition that assembled the world's largest seasonally flooded ecosystems. Genome sequencing was used to reconstr...

Ours is an often integrative undertaking, a discipline peppered with combinatorial neologisms that reflect the formation and ad- vances of practice and of thought: bio·geography, phylo·geogra- phy (Avise et al., 1987) and macro·ecology (Brown & Maurer, 1989), for example. When coined, these new words described an idea— perhaps a technologically ena...

Amazonia has a very high, although still incompletely known, species diversity distributed over a mosaic of heterogeneous habitats that are also poorly characterized. As a result of this multi‐faceted complexity, Amazonia poses a great challenge to geogenomic approaches that strive to find causal links between Earth's geological history and biotic...

This Report provides a comprehensive, objective, open, transparent, systematic, and rigorous scientific assessment of the state of the Amazon’s ecosystems, current trends, and their implications for the long-term well-being of the region, as well as opportunities and policy relevant options for conservation and sustainable development.

In the Amazon basin, several species are restricted to or occur primarily in habitats along rivers. However, little is known about habitat occupancy over time and how seasonal fluctuations in the level of rivers affect bird species occurrence in floodplains. In this study, we verified if the occupancy and detection probability of 10 floodplain bird...

Aim Continental evolutionary radiations provide opportunities to understand how landscape evolution and biotic factors interact to generate species diversity. Additionally, understanding whether diversification dynamics differ between montane and lowland environments is a long‐standing question with few comparative analyses in the Neotropics. To ad...

A major barrier to advancing ornithology is the systemic exclusion of professionals from the Global South. A recent special dossier, Advances in Neotropical Ornithology, and a shortfalls analysis therein, unintentionally followed a long-standing pattern of highlighting individuals, knowledge, and views from the Global North, while largely omitting...

Large Amazonian rivers impede dispersal for many species, but lowland river networks frequently rearrange, thereby altering the location and effectiveness of river barriers through time. These rearrangements may promote biotic diversification by facilitating episodic allopatry and secondary contact among populations. We sequenced genome-wide marker...

Paleofluvial dynamics is crucial to understand the role of rivers as biogeographic boundaries in Amazonia during the Cenozoic, period when the Amazonian biome and drainage system were assembled. In central Amazonia, fluvial deposits of the Alter do Chão, Iranduba and Novo Remanso Formations host supergene iron oxides and record changes in the distr...

Alpha taxonomy endeavours to propose a coherent vision of existing species and, simultaneously, to individualize the natural entities useful to understand evolutionary processes. This ideal is especially difficult when available data lack congruence. Here we address the polytypic species Synallaxis rutilans (ruddy spinetail), a suboscine passerine...

Alpha taxonomy endeavours to propose a coherent vision of existing species and, simultaneously, to individualize the natural entities useful to understand evolutionary processes. This ideal is especially difficult when available data lack congruence. Here we address the polytypic species Synallaxis rutilans (ruddy spinetail), a suboscine passerine...

To determine the effect of rivers, environmental conditions, and isolation by distance on the distribution of species in Amazonia. Location: Brazilian Amazonia. Time period: Current. Major taxa studied: Birds, fishes, bats, ants, termites, butterflies, ferns ? lyco-phytes, gingers and palms. We compiled a unique dataset of biotic and abiotic inform...

Hydroelectric dams represent an important threat to seasonally flooded environments in the Amazon basin. We aimed to evaluate how a dam in the Madeira River, one of the largest tributaries of the Amazonas River, affected floodplain avifauna. Bird occurrence was recorded through simultaneous passive acoustic monitoring in early successional vegetati...

Large Amazonian rivers impede dispersal for many species, but lowland river networks frequently rearrange, thereby altering the location and effectiveness of river-barriers through time. These rearrangements may promote biotic diversification by facilitating episodic allopatry and secondary contact among populations. We sequenced genome-wide marker...

This Report provides a comprehensive, objective, open, transparent, systematic, and rigorous scientific assessment of the state of the Amazon’s ecosystems, current trends, and their implications for the long-term well-being of the region, as well as opportunities and policy relevant options for conservation and sustainable development.

Aim: We tested if historical demographic changes of populations occurring on the floodplains of a major Amazon Basin tributary could be associated with range expansions from upper and middle sections of the river, following the establishment of widespread river-created environments during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. Location: Solimoes River,...

Context Amazonian white-sand ecosystems ( campinas ) are open vegetation patches which form a natural island-like system in a matrix of tropical rainforest. Due to a clear distinction from the surrounding matrix, the spatial characteristics of campina patches may affect the genetic diversity and composition of their specialized organisms, such as t...

Aim Ecological, climatic and palaeogeographical processes drive biological diversification. However, the evolutionary outcomes of those mechanisms are complex and difficult to discriminate. Here, we test how alternative drivers affected connectivity along the Amazonian floodplains generating current patterns of population structure and diversity wi...

Aim Amazonian floodplains include distinct types of seasonally flooded habitats, determined by the flooding regime and sedimentation dynamics. Some bird species prefer specific habitat types within the floodplains. To investigate whether distinct habitats are differentially affected by geologic and climatic history, we compare population history in...

We assessed population structure and the spatio‐temporal pattern of diversification in the Glossy Antshrike Sakesphorus luctuosus (Aves, Thamnophilidae) to understand the processes shaping the evolutionary history of Amazonian floodplains and address unresolved taxonomic controversies surrounding its species limits. By targeting ultraconserved elem...

The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic reveals a major gap in global biosecurity infrastructure: a lack of publicly available biological samples representative across space, time, and taxonomic diversity. The shortfall, in this case for vertebrates, prevents accurate and rapid identification and monitoring of emer...

Several bird taxa have been recently described or elevated to full species and almost twice as many bird species than are currently recognized may exist. Defining species is one of the most basic and important issues in biological science because unknown or poorly defined species hamper subsequent studies. Here, we evaluate the species limits and e...

The complex landscape history of the Neotropics has generated opportunities for population isolation and diversification that place this region among the most species-rich in the world. Detailed phylogeographic studies are required to uncover the biogeographic histories of Neotropical taxa, to identify evolutionary correlates of diversity, and to r...

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...

Aim Neotropical savanna birds occur north and south of, but mostly not in the Amazon Basin, except for a few isolated savanna patches. Here, we investigate the phylogeography of 23 taxa of Neotropical savanna birds co‐distributed across multiple isolated savanna patches to assess to what extent these species have a shared history of spatial diversi...

A Floresta Amazônica é a maior floresta tropical do mundo e ocupa uma região de aproximadamente 6,7 milhões de km². E o Brasil possui grande responsabilidade na sua conservação, afinal mais da metade (60%) da Floresta Amazônica – o que abrange uma área de 4,1 milhões de km² – se encontra em território brasileiro. Além disso, quase metade do territó...

Context Amazonian white-sand ecosystems (campinas) are open vegetation patches which form a natural island-like system in a matrix of tropical rainforest. Due to their clear distinction from the surrounding matrix, the spatial characteristics of campina patches may affect the genetic diversity and composition of their specialized organisms such as...

Although the expansion of open vegetation within Amazonia was the basis for the Forest Refugia hypothesis, studies of Amazonian biota diversification have focussed mostly on forest taxa. Here we compare the phylogeographic patterns and population history of two sister species associated with Amazonian open-vegetation patches, Elaenia cristata and E...

Mixed carbonate-siliciclastic platforms developed in the onshore and offshore zones of several basins along the Amazonian coast starting in the Palaeocene. The shutdown of Miocene carbonate accumulation in distinct tectonic settings shows different evolutionary histories along the Eastern Amazonian coast. The shutdown has been attributed to the abu...

To determine the effect of rivers, environmental conditions, and isolation by distance on the distribution of species in Amazonia. Location: Brazilian Amazonia. Time period: Current. Major taxa studied: Birds, fishes, bats, ants, termites, butterflies, ferns ? lyco-phytes, gingers and palms. We compiled a unique dataset of biotic and abiotic inform...

Target capture sequencing effectively generates molecular marker arrays useful for molecular systematics. These extensive data sets are advantageous where previous studies using a few loci have failed to resolve relationships confidently. Moreover, target capture is well-suited to fragmented source DNA, allowing data collection from species that la...

No momento em que os estudos para a implantação da UHE Bem Querer avançam rapidamente [3], torna-se importante chamar atenção para resultados de pesquisas recentes que levantam preocupações sobre os impactos potenciais desta barragem. Ao menos sete barragens estão planejadas para a bacia do rio Negro, sendo quatro ao longo do rio Branco. A UHE de B...

• The extent and intensity of impacts of multiple new dams in the Amazon basin on specific biological groups are potentially large, but still uncertain and need to be better understood. • It is known that river disruption and regulation by dams may affect sediment supplies, river channel migration, floodplain dynamics, and, as a major adverse conse...

Several factors have been proposed as drivers of species diversification in the Neotropics, including environmental heterogeneity, the development of drainage systems and historical changes in forest distribution due to climatic oscillations. Here, we investigate which drivers contributed to the evolutionary history and current patterns of diversit...

Amazonian rivers have been proposed to act as geographic barriers to species dispersal, either driving allopatric speciation or defining current distribution limits. The strength of the barrier varies according to the species’ ecological characteristics and the river's physical properties. Environmental heterogeneity may also drive compositional ch...

We identify key interdisciplinary questions and approaches to understanding the paleogeographic and biotic history of Amazonia. We discuss the importance of comparing evolutionary taxonomic units across groups and considering their particular environmental affinities as a framework for a mechanistic understanding of how the diversity of Amazonia wa...

White sand ecosystems (WSE) occur in nutrient-poor sandy soils patchily distributed throughout the lowlands of Amazonia. The diversification and current patterns of diversity of birds and plants specialized to the WSE were likely affected by abiotic conditions in very different ways relative to those in the upland Terra Firme forest, which has been...

The Amazon basin region, which harbors the largest river system in the world, and which is drained by the Amazon River, has experienced several geomorphological and climatic changes over time. These shifts, as we know, led to distinct signatures in the abiotic variables and the diversification patterns of its native biota. One excellent and yet sti...

The role of climate as a speciation driver in the Amazon has long been discussed. Phylogeographic studies have failed to recover synchronous demographic responses across taxa, although recent evidence supports the interaction between rivers and climate in promoting speciation. Most studies, however, are biased toward upland forest organisms, while...

To elucidate the relationships and spatial range evolution across the world of the bird genus Turdus (Aves), we produced a large genomic dataset comprising ca 2 million nucleotides for ca 100 samples representing 53 species, including over 2000 loci. We estimated time-calibrated maximum-likelihood and multispecies coalescent phylogenies and carried...

A biodiversidade aquática e a elevada produtividade pesqueira da Bacia Amazônica se devem principalmente à dinâmica anual dos pulsos de inundação e às extensas áreas alagáveis. Alguns dos principais impactos da construção de barragens para geração de hidroeletricidade incidem precisamente nesta dinâmica hidrológica. A construção da Usina Hidrelétri...

The Amazonian landscape evolution is the result of the combined effect of Andean tectonism, climate and the Earth’s interior dynamics. To reconstruct the landscape evolution and its influence on paleoenvironmental variations within Amazonia since the Oligocene, we conducted numerical experiments that incorporate different surface and geodynamic pro...

Amazonia has been a focus of interest since the early days of biogeography as an intrinsically complex and extremely diverse region. This region comprises an intricate mosaic that includes diverse types of forest formations, flooded environments and open vegetation. Increased knowledge about the distribution of species in Amazonia has led to the re...