Fernando Antonio Santos Fernandez

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

Starting around 50,000 years ago, most large terrestrial animals went extinct in most continents. These extinctions have been attributed either to climatic changes, impacts of human dispersal across the world or a synergy among both. Most studies regarding these extinctions, however, have focused on particular continents or used low-resolution anal...

As Alfred Russell Wallace once wrote, we live in a zoologically impoverished world, from which most of the largest, strangest and most spectacular animals disappeared quite recently. About two thirds of all animal species larger than 50 kg (the so-called megafauna) were extinct from the late Pleistocene onwards, starting in Australia at about fifty...

As defaunation spreads through the world, there is an urgent need for restoring ecological interactions, thus assuring ecosystem processes. Here, we define the new concept of credit of ecological interactions, as the number of interactions that can be restored in a focal area by species colonization or reintroduction. We also define rewiring time,...

The loss or reduction of animal populations and consequent extinction of ecological interactions in Neotropical forests demand urgent conservation initiatives to reverse these trends. One of the rainforests with the highest levels of mammal defaunation is the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Local mammalian extinctions in the biome were evaluated to set...

Rewilding has been intensely debated among conservationists and ecologists. Multiple definitions and conceptual frameworks have been proposed for rewilding programmes, but hitherto all with a focus on promoting biodiversity conservation via restoration of ecological processes. Recently, however, it has been proposed to instead focus rewilding on th...

Todos os dias, milhões de cariocas abrem suas janelas e descortinam a paisagem. Nesta cidade, é difícil olhar para fora e não vislumbrar sequer uma nesga de verde no horizonte. Mas, a maioria desconhece o que se passa naquelas florestas que avistam de casa. Não sabem que muitas delas são áreas protegidas. Ignoram que algumas nem estavam ali poucas...

Species reintroduction is a management strategy to restore ecosystem functioning through the reestablishment of ecological interactions and related ecological processes, like pollination and seed dispersal. Selecting the best species to achieve this goal remains challenging. We present a trait‐based framework to estimate the effects of species rein...

Conservation translocation - the movement of species for conservation benefit - includes reintroducing species into the wild, reinforcing dwindling populations, helping species shift ranges in the face of environmental change, and moving species to enhance ecosystem function. Conservation translocation can lead to clear conservation benefits and ca...

The loss of larger frugivores alters seed dispersal. Species reintroductions have been proposed as a strategy for reversing local disperser extinctions. However, their effects on ecological processes have seldom been assessed. Howler monkeys (Alouatta guariba) have been reintroduced in Tijuca National Park, a defaunated Atlantic Forest fragment. We...

Species reintroductions can be used as a conservation strategy to restore ecological interactions and the functionality of impoverished ecosystems. The ecological effects of reintroductions go beyond restoring pairwise interactions, because reintroductions can change how extant species are indirectly linked to each other in an ecological community....

Report on the Brown howler monkeys (Alouatta guariba) reintroduction initiative in Tijuca National Park, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The species had been extinct for decades and the reintroduction process is still in its initial stages, but it does register some indicators of success and some implementation difficulties.

Seed dispersal and predation are paramount for tropical plant diversity. When encountered by scatter-hoarding frugivores, seeds can be either eaten, dispersed or ignored. But even after dispersal, seed caches are still subjected to predation. Many factors are known to influence these dynamics; however, how frequently hoarders use certain patches ha...

The biased loss of large and medium frugivores alters seed dispersal and plant regeneration. Species reintroductions have been proposed as a strategy to reverse the consequences of species loss. However, reintroductions effects on ecological processes are seldom accessed, which hinders the comprehension of reintroductions' potential to reestablish...

Animal mating systems provide key insights into the relationship between evolutionary processes and ecological factors such as the spatio-temporal fuctuation of resource abundance. Characteristics of mating systems can be inferred from the spatial distribution of conspecifcs and the arrangement of reproductive pairs. Here we used home-range size an...

The aim of animal reintroductions has mainly been species recovery; only few reintroduction initiatives focus on ecosystem restoration. Therefore, reintroduction consequences on ecological interactions are seldom assessed. We used the interaction between a reintroduced population of agoutis ( Dasyprocta leporina ) and a vulnerable tropical endemic...

Activity range ‐ the amount of time spent active per day ‐ is a fundamental aspect contributing to the optimization process by which animals achieve energetic balance. Based on their size and the nature of their diet, theoretical expectations are that larger carnivores need more time active to fulfil their energetic needs than do smaller ones and a...

Rewilding has been an increasingly popular tool to restore plant–animal interactions and ecological processes impaired by defaunation. However, the reestablishment of such processes has seldom been assessed. We investigated the restoration of ecological interactions following the reintroduction of the brown howler monkey (Alouatta guariba) to a def...

Trophic rewilding has been suggested as a restoration tool to restore ecological interactions and reverse defaunation and its cascading effects on ecosystem functioning. One of the ecological processes that has been jeopardized by defaunation is animal-mediated seed dispersal. Here, we propose an approach that combines joint species distribution mo...

Domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) are one of the most common exotic species in protected areas, and their impact is an important conservation concern. This study evaluated the occurrence of domestic dogs in one of the world's largest urban forests, the Tijuca National Park (TNP; 3953 ha), the most visited Park in Brazil. From April to Septembe...

The Tinguá Biological Reserve (TBR) is the largest protected area of this category in Rio de Janeiro state. Here, for the first time, we present the historical composition of terrestrial mammals' assemblage of TBR region. An inventory was conducted using transect surveys, nonstandard transects, survey of museum specimens and informal reports. Consi...

Áreas protegidas são essenciais na conservação da biodiversidade. No entanto, sofrem com a presença de fatores de ameaça antropogênicos, como ruas e estradas passando em seu interior, turismo muito intenso, alterações próximas à borda e pressão de caça. Mamíferos de médio e grande porte têm grande importância ecológica e são especialmente afetados...

We evaluated the biogeographic factors that influence composition and diversity of the Neotropical otter diet. We also tested whether Lontra longicaudis selected fish in its diet per their availability. We collected data from 41 studies, covering most of the otter’s distribution, 32 of which had prey identified to family level. Fish was the main pr...

Genes et al. 2 Credit of ecological interactions: a new conceptual framework to support 3 conservation in a defaunated world 4 5 Appendix 1-modelling procedures. 6 7 The population expansion is represented by the increase of square areas within a 8 square virtual landscape (Fig. A1.A). We chose a square growth representation in 9 order to cover ent...

Reintroduction of locally extirpated species is an increasingly popular conservation tool. However, few initiatives focus on the restoration of ecological processes. In addition, many reintroductions fail to conduct post-release monitoring, hampering both assessment of their success and implementation of adaptive management actions. In 2009 a reint...

We report the type and pattern of use of resting sites used by 14 radio-tracked opossums. Philander frenatus rested in natural structures but also on spherical structures of dry leaves, probably built by them. Caluromys philander and Marmosa paraguayana rested at forest canopy preventing nest type identification. More than half of the resting site...

Defaunation has a major driver of biodiversity loss in tropical forests. Here we discuss how to reverse defaunation by re-introducing key species in defaunated or restored forests.

Animals make directional movements toward resources to satisfy nutritional, reproductive, and protection needs. We evaluated resource selection by the spiny rat (Thrichomys fosteri) in a heterogeneous habitat, disentangling the relative importance of habitat structure, escape cover, food availability, and intraspecific competition. The last 2 varia...

The water opossum Chironectes minimus is the world’s only semi-aquatic marsupial. It is considered rare, and it is reported on several regional conservation lists of species as either endangered or data deficient. Given its uniqueness and the poor knowledge of its ecology, we aimed to investigate home range size and overlap and habitat selection of...

The water opossum Chironectes minimus is the world’s only semi-aquatic marsupial. It is considered rare, and it is reported on several regional conservation lists of species as either endangered or data deficient. Given its uniqueness and the poor knowledge of its ecology, we aimed to investigate home range size and overlap and habitat selection of...

Circadian use of time is an important, but often neglected, part of an animal's niche. We compared the activity patterns of the Neotropical otter Lontra longicaudis in two different areas in Brazil using camera traps placed at the entrance of holts. We obtained 58 independent photos in the Atlantic Forest (273 camera trap-days) and 46 photos in Pan...

This repository contains supplementary information regarding the paper "Walking on their own legs: unassisted population growth of agoutis reintroduced to restore seed dispersal in an Atlantic Forest reserve", authored by Caio Fittipaldi Kenup, Raissa Sepulvida, Catharina Kreischer and Fernando Antonio dos Santos Fernandez Contained here are: R Scr...

Memory is among the most important and neglected forces that shapes animal movement patterns. Research on the movement–memory interface is crucial to understand how animals use spatial learning to navigate across space because memory‐based navigation is directly linked to animals' space use and home range behaviour; however, because memory cannot b...

Usar radiotelemetria como referência para calibrar estimativas de tamanho de área de vida obtidas por armadilhas fotográficas, para que essa última técnica possa ser aplicada isoladamente em futuros estudos.

We reviewed information about the natural history of the water opossum Chironectes minimus and brought new data on a population studied in Atlantic Forest streams of Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil. The study was carried out from October 2004 to February 2011 using capture-mark-recapture and radiotelemetry techniques. We obtained 127 captures of 43 in...

Nectomys squamipes is a semi-aquatic rodent with a wide geographic range in Brazilian forests and savannas. This species is a host for several parasites associated with aquatic environments, especially Schistosoma mansoni, and thus its spatial pattern may influence some diseases’ patterns. Here we present important aspects of water rat spatial beha...

Given the need to guide organizations on the way of evaluating the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation actions, LIFE Institute has identified objective criteria that allow monitoring results in conservation. Classes of Conservation Result Indicators (CRI) have been refined in order to evaluate information from the genetic diversity of specie...

Reintroduction is an increasingly important tool to restore local extinctions and ecological interactions. Evaluating the success of reintroduction projects allows conservationists to learn from previous experience. Here we report on the reintroduction of agoutis, Dasyprocta leporina, to a Brazilian Atlantic Forest reserve in order to (1) determine...

We evaluated the selection of resting sites occupied by the water opossum Chironectes minimus, between 2004 and 2010, in streams of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Fourteen radio-tracked adult (males and females) opossums used natural cavities as resting sites. Opossums selected narrow river stretches and selected their resting sites mainly accordin...

The consumption of the carrion of a tapiti by a reintroduced female Dasyprocta leporina was observed in the wild. Herein, besides describing this event, we reviewed other evidence of vertebrate consumption by agoutis. Most of the studies describing this behaviour have been carried out in captivity. The preyed animals included birds and small rodent...

Nestedness, the pattern in which the species of a species-poor community are a subset of species-rich communities, can provide information regarding species order of extinction, which is vital knowledge for conservation biology. We tested the hypotheses that the nestedness of mammal communities in forest remnants is influenced by sampling effort, m...

We investigate the potential flaws of estimating animal home range using indexes based on distance between captures as proposed by Püttker et al. (2012, Journal of Mammalogy 93:115—123). Through simulated capture distributions we demonstrated that distance indexes are inherently correlated with home-range estimates derived from the same data set. W...

22 | ciÊnciahoje | 304 | vOL. 51 ciÊnciahoje | 304 | junhO 2013 | 23 E C O L O G I A Alguns dos maiores problemas ambientais da atualidade são as extinções, sejam de espécies ou populações, e a conse-quente perda de interações ecológicas. Para diminuir os impactos do desaparecimento de populações de animais em áreas específi cas, a reintrodução vem...

The activity of the water opossum Chironectes minimus was studied in Atlantic forest rivers in south-eastern Brazil using radiotracking, from October 2004 to October 2008. There were 439 nocturnal fixes of 11 males and four females. Activity patterns of the water opossum were compared among sexes and seasons, using linear and generalized linear mix...

Feral pigs are the most common wild form of Sus scrofa outside the species’ native range. Nevertheless, there was a recent invasion of the Eurasian wild boar form in South America that has not yet been described. This work aimed to describe the phenotype of S. scrofa’s wild populations in the Neotropics. Adult males were collected in Araucaria Fore...

Reintroduction has been recognized as a powerful conservation tool, but in order to ensure its success, animal monitoring is highly recommended. One way to monitor released animals is to put radiotelemetry collars on them. These devices, however, can harm the subjects, causing serious wounds. Our objectives in this work were to describe the injurie...

Feral pigs are the most common wild form of Sus scrofa out of the species´ native range. Nevertheless, there is an invasion of Eurasian wild boar form in South America not yet described. We aimed describe the phenotype of S. scrofa as alien species in a neotropical ecosystem, the Araucaria Forest, Southern Brazil. Considering a recent invasion of w...

The study by Prescott et al. (1) provides an inspiring quantitative framework for disentangling the effects of humans and climate on megafaunal extinctions, which is essential because their relative importance across time and space remains one of the key missing pieces for solving the late Quaternary extinctions puzzle. However, the analyses of Pre...

The concept of sustainability is that present use of a resource would not prevent it being available for future generations. For exploited biological populations, sustainability is a demographic question. Herein we reviewed studies (released 1987-2010) evaluating presumably sustainable use of timber, hunting and non-timber forest products (NTFP) in...

Palms are important components of tropical forest plant communities, due both to their abundance (Henderson et al. 2000) and to the network of interactions with their pollinators and dispersers (Henderson 2002, Zona & Henderson 1989). Forest fragmentation alters the biotic and abiotic conditions of habitats (Ewers & Didham 2006, Fahrig 2003) and it...

In South America, the invasive feral pig (Sus scrofa Linnaeus) has become established in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and in a wide range within Brazil, along the southern half of the Atlantic Forest, in the cerrado (savanna) and in the Pantanal wetland. The geographical ranges of the two most common South American native peccary (Tayassu pecari Li...

Large-seeded plants are especially vulnerable to the loss of seed dispersers in small forest fragments. The palm Attalea humilis goes against this trend by reaching high abundances in small remnants. Productivity, seed dispersal and seed predation of A. humilis were investigated in two large (2400 and 3500 ha) and three small (19, 26 and 57 ha) Atl...

Understanding the mechanisms that determine the abundance of small mammals in fragmented landscapes is crucial for the conservation of their populations. The abundance of marsupials and rodents was studied from 1999 to 2001 in fragments of Atlantic Forest. A capture–mark–recapture study was carried out in three small fragments (2.8–9.1 ha), two med...

Density dependence in habitat utilisation by a population of wood mice (Apodemus sylvaticus L.) was investigated within a habitat mosaic produced by the felling of mature Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis Bong. Carrière). A capture-mark-recapture study was carried out from May 1990 to June 1992, with trapping in five 0.81-ha grids marked in mature for...

Because most invertebrate seed predators are host-specific, they are usually expected to produce Janzen–Connell patterns. This expectation was fulfilled for Astrocaryum but not for Allagoptera, depending on the effects of bruchine and scolytine predators on the seeds of these palms. Thus, the mere existence of invertebrate predation is not sufficie...

Esse estudo teve o objetivo de descrever flutuações populacionais alternadas para os marsupiais Philander frenatus e Metachirus nudicaudatus na Mata Atlântica, e avaliar as hipóteses de que seriam causadas por capturabilidade diferencial entre espécies e estações, assincronia reprodutiva, diferentes dietas e tolerâncias fisiológicas ou competição i...

The spatial patterns presented by the rodent Necromys lasiurus were studied through capture-mark-recapture in a grassland among Atlantic Coastal Forest fragments in Southeastern Brazil. Males moved farther than females. Males moved similar distances in the dry and wet seasons, whereas females moved significantly longer distances in the dry season....

INTERACTIONS OF MAMMALS AND PALMS IN FRAGMENTED NEOTROPICAL LANDSCAPES. Human-induced forest fragmentation and hunting create so-called �empty forests�, wherein the loss of major vertebrates results in the disruption of many animal-plant interactions, including seed dispersal and predation. Such disturbances affect recruitment of seedlings and ulti...

A population of wood mice, Apodemus sylvaticus (L.), was studied by capture-mark-recapture, in five 0.81 ha grids within a habitat mosaic produced by the felling of a plantation of mature Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis Carriere). From May 1990 to June 1992, we estimated population sizes, survival (total and by weight classes), recruitment, and home...

We Studied the Population structure, spatial patterns, and activity patterns of the Water opossum (Chironectes minimus) via capture-mark-recapture and radiotelemetry from October 2004 to October 2006 ill Atlantic Forest streams in southeastern Brazil. We tested the hypothesis of reproductive seasonality, the usual pattern in neotropical marsupials,...

Home ranges of individuals of the gray four-eyed opossum Philander frenatus were studied by capture–mark–recapture (CMR) and radiotelemetry, within a set of eight Atlantic Forest fragments surrounded by a grassland matrix in the state of Rio de Janeiro, southeastern Brazil. Trapping sessions were carried out in all the forest fragments and in the g...

RESUMO A fragmentação florestal e a caça criam as chamadas "florestas vazias", onde extinções ecológicas de grandes vertebrados resultam na perda de interações entre animais e plantas como a dispersão e a predação de sementes. Alterações nesses processos afetam o recrutamento das plântulas e, consequentemente, a abundância e diversidade das plantas...

Cavia intermedia may be the mammal with the smallest geographical distribution in the world, because it is endemic to a 10-ha island and therefore vulnerable to extinction. The objective of this study was to understand the population dynamics of C. intermedia in order to define its conservation status and to provide information for its management....

Some species of otters have been much more studied than others. A particular challenge in the management and conservation of otters worldwide is that some of the lesser-known species are also among those being the object of conservation concerns. In this paper, I argue about the importance of producing more scientific knowledge about lesser-known o...

The diets of sympatric species of opossums coexisting in small (<10 ha) Atlantic Forest fragments were studied at Poço das Antas Biological Reserve, southeastern Brazil. Food items consumed by Caluromys philander and Didelphis aurita were investigated through the analysis of faecal contents, and compared with the diet of Micoureus demerarae analyse...

The spatial distribution of small mammals in relation to distance from forest edges, before and after fire, was studied in Atlantic Forest fragments in Brazil. None of nine species was captured exclusively on either edges or forest interior. Before the fire only the rodents Akodon cursor and Oecomys con-color were captured more often at the edge th...

Resumo Levantamentos de populações de espécies da fauna são ainda raros em unidades de conservação no Brasil. Este tipo de informação é importante para avaliar a efetividade de áreas protegidas na conservação de populações viáveis de espécies alvo. Este trabalho visa apresentar estimativas de tamanho populacional de cervos e veados campeiros no Par...

From the nested structure often found in biological communities, it could be expected that the order of species loss after forest fragmentation would be predictable to some extent. This could expose the factors that would cause differential vulnerability of species to local extinctions in forest fragments. In this study, small mammals were sampled...

Habitat fragmentation causes a sharp increase in the forested area affected by edge effects (Murcia 1995). Compared with the core of the forest, edges present higher litterfall rates, air and soil humidity reduction, higher temperature and increased wind incidence (Bierregaard et al. 1992, Didham & Lawton 1999, Laurance et al. 1998, Matlack 1993)....

A população de cervo-do-pantanal Blastocerus dichotomus do Parque Nacional de Ilha Grande teve seus fatores de ameaça investigados através de entrevistas com a população que ainda reside no Parque e também com moradores do entorno. Foram identificadas as seguintes ameaças: (1) variação no regime hidrológico do rio Paraná provocada pelas usinas hidr...

Fragmentos maiores tendem a abrigar um maior número de espé-cies, porém esta relação é mais clara quando se considera uma ampla variação de tamanho, por exemplo, fragmentos de 10 a 1.000.000 ha. Quando a variação não é tão grande, a relação positiva entre o número de espécies e o tamanho da área não aparece, ou não é tão evidente, não só para mamíf...

Biology to understand how and why sex ratios vary in small natural populations. In the classic TheGenetical Theory of Natural Selection, Fisher (1930) was the first to convincingly explain why in most natural populations sex ratio is approximately 1 :1. Accord i ng to Fisher (1930), a ny one sex that de-creases within a population would have on ave...

Population dynamics and reproduction of four species of muroid rodents (Akodon cursor, Bolomys lasiurus, Oligoryzomys nigripes, and Mus musculus) were studied through capture-mark-recapture in a grassland between fragments of Atlantic Forest from March 1998 to February 1999. A. cursor and B. lasiurus accounted together for 93.5% of all captures. O....

Rates of interfragment movements were estimated for small mammals inhabiting a group of eight Atlantic Coastal Forest fragments, surrounded by grassland matrix, in order to understand the degree to which each species' population was isolated. Didelphis aurita showed the greatest movement rate (19.4% of recaptures showing interfragment movements), f...

The diet of the marsupial Micoureus demerarae was studied from fecal samples obtained from live-trapping in Atlantic Coastal Forest fragments at Poço das Antas Biological Reserve, southeastern Brazil, from 1995 to 1997. Among arthropods, the most frequent food items belonged to the orders Coleoptera and Hymenoptera, whereas Arachnida, Orthoptera, H...

VIVEIROS DE CASTRO, E. B.; Fernandez, F.A.S. . A fragmentação florestal na Reserva Biológica de Poço das Antas como consequência das intervenções de engenharia na bacia do Rio São João. Anais do III Congresso Brasileiro de Unidades de Conservação, Fortaleza, 2002. The dredgings and straightennings of the course of São João river, carried out in the...

As metapopulation dynamics is thought to play an important role in the conservation of mammals, mainly owing to the fragmentation process, a Population Viability Analysis (PVA) was used to evaluate the role and importance of individual patches to the metapopulation persistence of the long-furred wooly mouse opossum, Micoureus demerarae, a neotropic...

Patterns of population fluctuation, reproductive activity and age structure were studied in populations of the marsupial Micoureus demerarae occupying two small (7.0 and 8.8 ha) fragments of Atlantic Coastal Forest in southeastern Brazil, from 1995 to 1998. Males, but not females, were observed to move between populations. Estimated sizes of the...