Cássio Cardoso Pereira

Federal University of Minas Gerais | UFMG · Departamento de Genética Ecologia e Evolução

Aims Plants have limited resources for defenses and species that invest in biotic defenses might exhibit leaves that invest less in other types of defenses. We have investigated whether plants that have few mechanical defenses, but have extrafloral nectaries (EFNs) patrolled by ants, are less prone to herbivory, compared to plants without EFNs that...

• Gall‐inducers can be considered ecosystem engineers when they modify leaf morphology and create shelters for secondary users, altering properties of ecological communities. • In this study, we evaluated whether shelter structures created by leaf‐galling contribute to changes in the diversity and composition of the community at plant and leaf scal...

After a few years, Twitter relaunched its service that attests to the legitimacy of the user. Among all the categories included, there is a lack of a specific category that fits scientists, so important in the dissemination of knowledge, especially in the COVID-19 pandemic, representing a reliable voice to the population against fake news. Outside...

Despite constant scientific warnings, Brazil continues its relentless pace toward a harsh future in which water and food security will be under threat. Fight climate change is not solely saving the Amazon but the entire country, which should include the most diverse and water-producing savanna of the world, the Cerrado.

After Brazil’s 2 October presidential elections, images showed that votes for the current administration corresponded with cities located in the Amazon's arc of deforestation. In these regions, where agribusiness is strong, forest clearing, criminal fires, illegal mining, and invasions of protected areas have proliferated under the management of th...

Defensive mutualisms are common in tropical plants. In these interactions, ants can reduce plant herbivory through a combination of direct predation on herbivores and/or aggressive behavior toward herbivores that avoid ant-infested plants or are expelled when they arrive. A very particular case involving different biotic defenses occurs in an ende...

In the Cerrado, the sequential chaining of phenological events during the dry season is a pattern observed in many plant species. In this season, many plants completely lose their leaves, and soon after deciduous, there is an expressive production of leaf buds. In this study, we investigated the effect of irrigation and early defoliation on the tri...

The Cerrado Domain (Cerrado sensu lato) covers about two million km2 of Brazilian territory and consists of forest, savannah and grassland biomes, having dozens of phytophysiognomies that usually occur in mosaic, varying within this spectrum of different biomes. Amid so much diversity of species, life forms and geological aspects, some of its phyto...

We compiled a dataset that includes more than 1,000 unique records of ecosystem engineering by arthropods, in the form of structures built on plants. Data were gathered between 1932 and 2021, across more than 50 countries and several natural ecosystems, ranging from polar to tropical zones. Our records cover natural (91% of the records) and artific...

Studies on pollination and seed dispersal are essential for the conservation of plant diversity. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the pollination and dispersal syndromes of five fragments of the Cerrado Rupestre immersed in an agricultural landscape to answer the following questions: (i) What is the frequency of pollination and dispersal syndrom...

Current climate change is disrupting biotic interactions and eroding biodiversity worldwide. However, species sensitive to aridity, high temperatures and climate variability might find shelter in microclimatic refuges, such as leaf rolls built by arthropods. To explore how the importance of leaf shelters for terrestrial arthropods changes with lati...

In this study, we evaluated variation in vegetative and reproductive phenological events of four phylogenetically related plant species subjected to a seasonal environment. To this aim, we sampled 15 individuals of each plant species every fortnight for one year, between January and December of 2017. To assess when a given phenophase occurred mo...

The construction of shelters on plants by arthropods might influence other organisms via changes in colonization, community richness, species composition and functionality. Arthropods, including beetles, caterpillars, sawflies, spiders, and wasps often interact with host plants via the construction of shelters, building a variety of structures such...

How much leaf area do insects eat? A data set of insect herbivory sampled globally with a standardized protocol. Ecology 102(4): Abstract. Herbivory is ubiquitous. Despite being a potential driver of plant distribution and performance, herbivory remains largely undocumented. Some early attempts have been made to review, globally, how much leaf area...

Herbivory is ubiquitous. Despite being a potential driver of plant distribution and performance, herbivory remains largely undocumented. Some early attempts have been made to review, globally, how much leaf area is removed through insect feeding. Kozlov et al. (2015), in one of the most comprehensive reviews regarding global patterns of herbivory,...

Current climate change is disrupting biotic interactions and eroding biodiversity worldwide. However, species sensitive to drought, high temperatures and climate variability might persist in microclimatic refuges, such as leaf shelters built by arthropods. We conducted a distributed experiment across an 11,790 km latitudinal gradient to explore how...

The flora of the Rupestrian Savannah (Cerrado Rupestre) is composed of widely distributed species and endemic species from high altitude rocky outcrops. The aim of this study was to characterise the floristic composition, structure and diversity of fragments of Rupestrian Savannah in southeastern Brazil and to examine the similarity with other rupe...

Insects might impact communities and ecosystems through processes that are not trophic, via ecosystem engineering. In this study, we experimentally evaluated the role of the caterpillars Pandemis sp. as habitat modifiers in the tropical liana Trigonia rotundifolia. Specifically, we examined their effects on the abundance and richness of arthropods...

Insects might impact communities and ecosystems through processes that are not trophic, via ecosystem engineering. In this study, we experimentally evaluated the role of the caterpillars Pandemis sp. as habitat modifiers in the tropical liana Trigonia rotundifolia. Specifically, we examined their effects on the abundance and richness of arthropods...

Sessile and host-specific herbivores, such as gall-inducing insects, are usually patchily distributed within the populations of their host plants, and it has been suggested that both inter-and intra-plant variation affect gall abundance, distribution and survivorship. Variation in plant traits, such as size and architecture, has been previously dem...