Francisco Valente Neto

University of Campinas | UNICAMP

Odonates are suggested as bioindicators of human impact. However, their complex life cycles add additional challenges in the practical use as bioindicators, because the level of taxonomic identification could be dependent on life-history stage and, during their ontogeny, dramatic changes occur in their niche (ontogenetic niche shifts). Considering...

1. Deconstructing biological communities by grouping species according to their commonness or rarity might improve our understanding about the processes driving variation in biological communities. Such an approach considers differences among organisms and emergent ecological patterns. 2. In this study, we addressed the relative role of spatial and...

Studies on phylogenetic community ecology usually infer habitat filtering when communities are phylogenetically clustered or competitive exclusion when communities are overdispersed. This logic is based on strong competition and niche similarity among closely related species—a less common phenomenon than previously expected. Dragonflies and damself...

Metacommunity models predict that species richness and composition patterns in communities are determined predominantly by environmental selection and dispersal, with speciation and drift playing a lesser role. In the tropics, our understanding about these processes comes almost purely from empirical data; there is lack of formal confrontation betw...

The study of variation of species composition among sites is key to understanding community ecology, but few studies have assessed beta diversity patterns in highly dynamic stream networks in the Neotropical region. We assessed aquatic insect patterns of local contribution to beta diversity (LCBD) and species contribution to beta diversity (SCDB) i...

The actions required for the conservation of biodiversity depend on the responses of species to habitat loss, which can be neutral, linear or non-linear. Here, we test how the taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity of aquatic insects, dragonflies, frogs, and terrestrial mammals, as well as their species composition, respond to forest cov...

We investigated two inter-related questions: How is the fruit consumption rate affected by fish assembly and how does an increase in fruit production alter fish composition and richness? To answer these questions, we carried out two complementary experiments in a karst tropical stream, Brazil, South America. First, we measured the fish assemblage c...

Aquatic insects comprise 64% of freshwater animal diversity and are widely used as bioindicators to assess water quality impairment and freshwater ecosystem health, as well as to test ecological hypotheses. Despite their importance, a comprehensive, global database of aquatic insect occurrences for mapping freshwater biodiversity in macroecological...

Background Mosquito-borne diseases (e.g., transmitted by Aedes aegypti) affect almost 700 million people each year and result in the deaths of more than 1 million people annually. Methods We examined research undertaken during the period 1951–2020 on the effects of temperature and climate change on Ae. aegypti, and also considered research locatio...

Understanding how differences in intensity and frequency of hydrological disturbances affect the resistance and resilience of aquatic organisms is key to manage aquatic systems in a fast-changing world. Some aquatic insects have strategies that improve the permanence (resistance), while others use strategies that favor recoloni-zation (resilience)....

Habitat alteration and destruction are primary drivers of biodiversity loss. However, the evolutionary dimensions of biodiversity loss remain largely unexplored in many systems. For example, little is known about how habitat alteration/loss can lead to phylogenetic deconstruction of ecological assemblages at the local level. That is, while species...

1. Understanding how differences in intensity and frequency of hydrological disturbances affect the resistance and resilience of aquatic organisms is key to manage aquatic systems in a fast-changing world. Organisms’ responses to environmental changes can be influenced by different life strategies. Some aquatic organisms have strategies that improv...

1. Avoiding freshwater insect extinctions requires studies assessing causal links between a human pressure and biodiversity measures (threats), the state of biodiversity through time (status), and solutions to manage species loss. However, an imbalance between these different approaches on declines of freshwater insects and the distribution of the...

Biomonitoring is critical for characterizing and monitoring status, spatial patterns, and long-term trends in the ecological condition of freshwater ecosystems. The selection of cost-effective bioindicators is a critical step in establishing such monitoring programs. Key indicator considerations are a reliable response to anthropogenic disturbances...

Serious concerns have arisen regarding urbanization processes in western Amazônia, which result in the creation of artificial habitats, promoting the colonization of malaria vectors. We used structural equation modelling to investigate direct and indirect effects of forest cover on larval habitats and anopheline assemblages in different seasons. We...

Birds provide many ecosystem services to people, including provisioning, regulating and cultural services. People attribute multiple cultural values to ecosystems and biodiversity and the diversity of these cultural values can be considered as cultural diversity. While human-nature interactions occur more frequently in cities and urbanization negat...

As a consequence of accelerated and excessive use of pesticides in tropical regions, wilderness areas are under threat; this includes the Pantanal wetlands in the Upper Paraguay River Basin (UPRB). Using a Land Cover Land Use Change (LCLUC) modelling approach, we estimated the expected pesticide load in the Pantanal and the surrounding highlands re...

The influence of sociocultural traits on hunting profiles has received little attention, though it is critical to an understanding of how human societies use wildlife for consumption. Here, we assess whether ethnolinguistic groups, ecoregion, country, and watershed affect hunting profiles among Pano and Arawak indigenous groups, and non-indigenous...

Assessing water-quality in streams is traditionally measured at the local scale and in general it is spatially restricted. To scale-up water-condition assessment, there is a need to use new tools that enable prediction of large-scale changes in water-quality by expanding the analysis to landscape-levels and bioclimatic predictors. In addition, the...

Although they occupy only 3% of the global surface area, wetlands represent 43.5% of the global monetary value provided by ecosystem services (ES). The Pantanal is one of the biggest wetland areas and provides many types of ES as goods and services for humanity, including a highly diversified flora and fauna; food, freshwater, and pastureland; clim...

Differences in species composition between sites (β diversity) may be the result of spatial species replacement (turnover) or nestedness (subgroups of species from a more diverse site). In fragmented landscapes, the environmental factors that lead to these differences may be spatially structured. Herein, our objective is to determine if the β diver...

Climate change affects individual life-history characteristics and species interactions, including predator-prey interactions. While effects of warming on Aedes aegypti adults are well known, clarity the interactive effects of climate change (temperature and CO 2 concentration) and predation risk on the larval stage remains unexplored. In this stud...

Beta diversity can be portioned into local contributions to beta diversity (LCBD), which represents the degree of community composition uniqueness of a site compared to regionally sampled sites. LCBD can fluctuate among seasons and ecoregions according to site characteristics , species dispersal abilities, and biotic interactions. In this context,...

Purpose of Review We conducted a literature review to understand how landscape patterns affect ecological processes in metacommunities in lentic environments. Our aim was to identify trends in these studies considering taxa, aquatic systems, landscape metrics, and response variables. We also recorded whether studies were presenting the exclusive ef...

1. Protecting riparian vegetation around streams is vital in reducing the detrimental effects of environmental change on freshwater ecosystems and in maintaining aquatic biodiversity. Thus, identifying ecological thresholds is useful for defining regulatory limits and for guiding the management of riparian zones towards the conservation of freshwat...

Building bridges between environmental and political agendas is essential nowadays in face of the increasing human pressure on natural environments, including wetlands. Wetlands provide critical ecosystem services for humanity, and can generate a considerable direct or indirect income to the local communities. In order to meet many of the sustainab...

Humans have altered biodiversity worldwide, including accelerating species extinctions and loss of ecosystem services. Loss of many species is occurring even before they are collected for study, and researchers have recognized seven knowledge shortfalls that affect biodiversity and its use in conservation. This loss is especially true in aquatic ec...

The necessity to create national to global-scale biodiversity monitoring systems as part of assessing progress toward biodiversity agendas presents a challenge for signatory countries. This is a brief review of ongoing Brazilian national initiatives that would allow the construction of a general biomonitoring network scheme in protected areas; with...

Que as mudanças climáticas influenciam a biodiversidade e os serviços ecossistêmicos não há qualquer sombra de dúvida. Mas quais são exatamente essas influências? Existem espécies mais vulneráveis? Há espécies capazes de se adaptar? Podemos aprender com elas? Quais ecossistemas e serviços ambientais são mais afetados? Podemos evitar ou minimizar os...

Decisions about biodiversity conservation depend on how different taxonomic groups respond to human influenced environmental change. Here, we ask whether richness and composition of terrestrial (frugivorous butterflies and dung beetles) and aquatic insects (Plecoptera, Trichoptera, Ephemeroptera, Odonata and Coleoptera) change in a congruent manner...

Here we provide an updated checklist of the odonates from Bodoquena Plateau, Mato Grosso do Sul state, Brazil. We registered 111 species from the region. The families with the highest number of species were Libellulidae (50 species), Coenagrionidae (43 species) and Gomphidae (12 species). 35 species are registered in the IUCN Red List species, four...

We investigated (1) the variation of both species composition and species relative abundances of aquatic beetles associated with submerged woody debris in a transitional region between Cerrado (Brazilian savannah) and Atlantic Forest biomes; and (2) which assembling processes are more associated with the observed patterns, species sorting or mass e...

R e s p o n s e s o f A q u a t i c S a p r o x y l i c M a c r o i n v e r t e b r a t e s t o R e d u c e d-I m p a c t L o g g i n g i n C e n t r a l A m a z o n i a Abstract Reduced-impact logging (RIL) is an alternative land use because it reduces damage to forest cover in comparison with clear-cut practices. However, management practices ado...

Riparian deforestation is one of the main causes of change in freshwater ecosystems, resulting in the reduction of biological integrity and the loss of ecosystem functions. Our goal was to understand how a gradient of deforestation may affect abundance and richness of specialist and generalist macroinverte-brates associated with submerged woody deb...

First record of larvae of Chironomidae (Insecta, Diptera) as prey of Temnocephala sp. (Platyhelminthes, Temnocephalidae), an ectosymbiont on larvae of Corydalidae (Megaloptera). This study constitutes the first record of Temnocephala Blanchard, an ectosymbiont on Corydalidae, as a possible predator of chironomid larvae. Twenty-eight Corydalidae lar...

First record of larvae of Chironomidae (Insecta, Diptera) as prey of Temnocephala sp. (Platyhelminthes, Temnocephalidae), an ectosymbiont on larvae of Corydalidae (Megaloptera). This study constitutes the first record of Temnocephala Blanchard, an ectosymbiont on Corydalidae, as a possible predator of chironomid larvae. Twenty-eight Corydalidae lar...

Information on the Elmidae that occur in a country is important for the advancement of ecological knowledge and the use of these organisms in biomonitoring programs. To date, there are checklists of elmids recorded in two regions of Brazil— one for the Amazon region, listing 48 species in 14 genera, and another for the state of Rio de Janeiro, list...

The family Elmidae Curtis, 1830 has cosmopolitan distribution and most species inhabit riffles on streams and rivers, hence the name "riffle beetle". In recent years, this family has been featured in papers addressing the assessment and environmental monitoring of water quality. In Brazil, studies on the family remain scarce and the present investi...

We report boring activity of larval Lutrochus germari Grouvelle, 1889 and Stegoelmis sp. in submerged woody debris and describe the resulting grooves and faecal pellet production. This ability of the larvae was shown by three types of evidence: 1) examination of collected woody debris, 2) rearing of larvae and 3) gut content analysis. The larvae ex...

Coleoptera is the most species-rich order among the Insecta and although only 4% of its species are aquatic, it is an abundant group in the freshwater environments. This work aims to expand knowledge of the group primarily in lotic systems. Are proposed identification keys for larvae and adults of 17 families of aquatic Coleoptera known from the st...

RESUMO Os macroinvertebrados associados a troncos submersos ocupam este substrato como habitat, local para oviposição, refúgio e como fonte de alimento, sendo este obtido pela ingestão de madeira, fungos, detritos, ou pela predação. Visto as poucas informações sobre essa fauna para ecossistemas lóticos no Brasil, este trabalho apresenta uma lista d...