Marcelo Tabarelli

Federal University of Pernambuco | UFPE · Department of Botany

Anthropogenic landscape modification may lead to the proliferation of a few species and the loss of many. Here we investigate mechanisms and functional consequences of this winner–loser replacement in six human-modified Amazonian and Atlantic Forest regions in Brazil using a causal inference framework. Combining floristic and functional trait data...

Habitat loss can lead to biotic homogenization (decrease in β diversity) or differentiation (increase in β diversity) of biological communities. However, it is unclear which of these ecological processes predominates in human-modified landscapes. We used data on vertebrates, invertebrates, and plants to quantify β diversity based on species occurre...

Habitat loss can lead to biotic homogenization (decrease in β diversity) or differentiation (increase in β diversity) of biological communities. However, it is unclear which of these ecological processes predominates in human‐modified landscapes. We used data on vertebrates, invertebrates, and plants to quantify β diversity based on species occurre...

Wildfires associated with land-use and climate change have considered a key driver to the Amazon forest collapse. However, achieving a detailed understanding of how human-related disturbances impact forest successional trajectories needs comprehensive information spanning forest strata. Here, we investigate the impact of recurrent wildfires on fore...

Here, we examine the effects of wildfires on the soil seed bank of a terra firme forest in the eastern Amazon. This seed bank is described via community-level attributes across forest stands exposed to wildfires once or twice, as well as across unburned, old-growth forest stands. A total of 2345 seeds germinated (837.5 seeds/m2). Across all three f...

Nutrient dynamics directly influence forest productivity, yet their exploration in tropical dry forests, particularly in human-modified landscapes, is limited. We examine aboveground and soil carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus concentrations and stocks in 19 stands across gradients of rainfall, chronic anthropogenic disturbances (CAD), aboveground bi...

The ability of dry forests to deliver ecosystem services of both local and global relevance depends on the capacity of those forests to recover from constant disturbances in human-modified landscapes. Here we examine the effects posed by biomass, chronic human disturbances and aridity on the recovery of reproductive functional diversity by edible f...

Tropical dry forest productivity is thought to be driven by a combination of natural factors, particularly total water availability and seasonality. However, most of the world's dry forests have been converted into forest successional mosaics by a combination of slash-and-burn agriculture and exploitation of forest products, which has potential imp...

[Link to download: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1iSDW1L%7EGwcLqj ]-- In environments under chronic human disturbance, the persistence of woody plants via both resprouting of new shoots and clonal growth via new root suckers can increase survival and fitness. However, the relative frequency and importance of these mechanisms following disturbance...

Slash-and-burn agriculture is a common practice in dry forests worldwide. Understanding the relative importance of different regeneration mechanisms following this disturbance provides insights into forest regeneration dynamics and resilience. We assessed differences in structural components, the relative contribution of vegetative and sexual repro...

Pollination is a key ecosystem service of critical importance for food production. However, globally, several regions are already experiencing pollinator shortage as pollinators are declining. Here, we investigate the origin, pollinator dependence and economic value of 199 food crops cultivated in Brazil to understand to which extent (1) Brazilian...

Seed rain is critical for forest recovery, especially in abandoned lands that have been exposed to agriculture. However, such a critical role depends on seed viability, which has been largely overlooked in most seed rain studies. We assessed the viability of 5378 seeds of 24 woody species in the seed rain falling into 12 plots from a Brazilian trop...

Drastic changes in vegetation structure caused by exceeding ecological thresholds have fueled the interest in tropical forest responses to climate and land-use changes. Here, we examine the potential successional trajectories experienced by the largest dry tropical forest region in South America, driven by climate conditions and human disturbance....

The exploitation of nontimber forest products has been proposed as a sustainable way to exploit tropical forests, but such an opportunity remains to be examined case-by-case. We examine the impact of the intensification of the açaí palm (Euterpe olera-cea) management for fruit production via increments in palm clumps/stems density on the woody plan...

Cropland intensification in tropical regions is usually associated with agricultural commodity expansion that penalizes the species diversity and environmental services of natural ecosystems. However, the extent to which cropland expansion affects the reproductive functional diversity of crop arrangements remains poorly investigated. Here we examin...

The environment plays an important role in resource selection by human groups. For example, the same environment shared by different cultures tends to have a greater similarity of useful plants. The present study departs from an innovative perspective, analyzing the factors that influence species richness and their versatility and utilitarian redun...

Wildfires have emerged as an escalating source of tropical forest degradation with a cascade of negative consequences for the sustainable development of tropical regions. This is particularly the case in the Amazon forest region as wildfires have already degraded a considerable extension of both secondary and old-growth forests, including "social f...

Chronic anthropogenic disturbances (chronic disturbances) and climate change can eliminate sensitive species and support the proliferation of disturbance-adapted ones leading native communities to biotic homogenization. We investigate the individual and interactive effects of increasing chronic disturbances and aridity on the biotic homogenization...

The exploitation of non‐timber forest products has been proposed as a sustainable way to exploit tropical forests, but such an opportunity remains to be proved. Here, we examine the impact of intensive açaí palm ( Euterpe oleracea ) management on the seed rain and soil seed bank in an estuarine forest landscape with a long history of forest managem...

Under continuous human disturbance, regeneration is the basis for biodiversity persistence and ecosystem service provision. In tropical dry forests, edaphic ecosystem engineering by biological soil crusts (biocrusts) could impact regeneration by influencing erosion control and soil water and nutrient fluxes, which impact landscape hydrology, geomor...

Interest in forest regeneration has increased as secondary forests in regeneration process are cited as the forests of the future. However, remaining forests are subjected to chronic anthropogenic disturbances, which may reorganize tropical biodiversity. This paper investigates the recovery of fruit-feeding butterfly assemblages following slash-and...

Zero hunger is one of the most challenging Sustainable Development Goals, one to which Latin America has demonstrated commitment through socioeconomic policies that target the most vulnerable people. However, political instability in Brazil, a major Latin American economy, has been responsible for retrogressive changes in social and environmental p...

Regenerating forests make up an increasingly large portion of tropical landscapes worldwide and regeneration dynamics may be influenced by leaf‐cutting ants (LCA), which proliferate in disturbed areas and collect seeds for fungus culturing. Here, we investigate how LCA influences seed fate in human‐modified areas of Caatinga dry forest. We evaluate...

Land-use changes have contributed to an increased interest in understanding the drivers of forest regeneration in human-modified landscapes. This is particularly true for arid ecosystems, in which regeneration is relatively less known, but more sensitive to land-use intensification and climate change. This paper aims to identify the relative contri...

The exploitation of non-timber forest products has been proposed as a sustainable way to exploit tropical forests, but such an opportunity remains to examined case-by-case. We examine the impact by the intensification of the açaí palm ( Euterpe oleracea ) management for fruit production via increments on palm clumps/stems density on the woody plant...

Anthropogenic disturbances and climate change are expected to reorganize biodiversity on multiple ecological levels from populations to ecosystems, especially in arid and semiarid regions due to environmental filtering imposed by water stress. This paper examines the individual and combined effects of chronic anthropogenic disturbance and increased...

Tropical forest regeneration across old fields has been mainly described as a predictable sequence of functional plant assemblages in response to environmental filtering. However, the way plant reproductive diversity is organized along forest regeneration and how the reproductive profile of woody flora may impact regeneration have been poorly inves...

Abandonment of agricultural lands promotes the global expansion of secondary forests, which are critical for preserving biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services. Such roles largely depend, however, on two essential successional attributes, trajectory and recovery rate, which are expected to depend on landscape-scale forest cover in non-lin...

Forest's recovery potential in human-modified landscapes is increasingly threatened by agricultural activities that disrupt critical sources of forest regeneration, such as the seed rain. Slash-and-burn agriculture is a good example. By slashing and burning the vegetation, this farming method can promote seed source and seed dispersal limitation, b...

Resprouting is a widespread mechanism through which woody plants recover from biomass loss and/or abiotic stress, particularly in fire-prone ecosystems. Here, we assess the resprouting responses to coppicing exhibited by woody plant species in a human-modified landscape of Caatinga dry forest, in the northeast of Brazil. A total of 150 resprouts...

Chronic anthropogenic disturbances and climate change have been recognized as drivers of biological reorganization across human-modified tropical landscapes, also negatively affecting the reproductive output of some plant species. Here, we investigated to what extent these drivers affect the reproductive output of Cenostigma microphyllum, a disturb...

Livestock browsing and trampling can deplete plant regeneration and thus drive natural ecosystems towards degradation. This phenomenon may be particularly true in tropical dry forests, which support extensive livestock herds feeding on native vegetation, but has rarely been experimentally addressed. Here we examine how browsing and trampling by exo...

Disruption of ecosystem services associated with climate change may affect human well-being in different ways. Medicinal plants provide extremely relevant ecosystem services. Here, we tested the hypothesis that highly suitable habitats (i.e. suitability ≥ 0.8) for medicinal plants in Caatinga dry forest may be potentially contracted under scenarios...

Forests that regrow naturally on abandoned fields are important for restoring biodiversity and ecosystem services, but can they also preserve the distinct regional tree floras? Using the floristic composition of 1215 early successional forests (≤20 years) in 75 human-modified landscapes across the Neotropic realm, we identified 14 distinct floristi...

Tropical forests worldwide have succumbed to rapid conversion into agricultural landscapes, but the local- and landscape-scale drivers of functional diversity and consequently ecosystem functioning remain poorly known, which limits management and conservation strategies. Here, we quantitatively assess how biofuel croplands affect taxonomic and func...

Aim Locally abundant species are typically widespread, while locally scarce species are geographically restricted—the so‐called abundance‐occupancy relationships (AORs). AORs help explain the drivers of species rarity and community assembly, but little is known about how variation around such relationship is driven by species traits and niche‐based...

Chronic anthropogenic disturbances and climate change are the main threats to biodiversity, acting as potential drivers of assembly reorganization in human-modified tropical landscapes. We aimed to understand how the reproductive traits of edible fruit plant assemblages respond to chronic disturbances and aridity in the Caatinga, a dry forest in no...

[PT-BR] Este livro originou-se de todo o esforço teórico e prático resultante do XII Curso de Campo Ecologia e Conservação da Caatinga (ECCA), realizado em 2019 pela Universidade Federal de Pernambuco. O Curso de Campo da Caatinga tem como objetivo a formação de recursos humanos de alta qualidade através do treinamento científico de alunos de pós-g...

Forest ecosystems are increasingly threatened by unsustainable agricultural practices, especially by those that damage their regenerative potential. This can be the case of slash-and-burn agriculture – a farming method that can negatively impact the soil seed bank, potentially limiting the resilience of forest ecosystems. To test this hypothesis, a...

Seedling recruitment, community assembly, and forest regeneration, while receiving substantial attention in tropical rain forests, have received little attention in tropical dry forests. Here, we examine the structure, composition, and diversity of woody seedling assemblages across 19 forest stands in a human‐modified landscape of Caatinga dry fore...

Flowering plant species and their nectar-feeding vertebrates exemplify some of the most remarkable biotic interactions in the Neotropics. In the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, several species of birds (especially hummingbirds), bats, and non-flying mammals, as well as one lizard feed on nectar, often act as pollinators and contribute to seed output of...

Flowering plant species and their nectar‐feeding vertebrates exemplify some of the most remarkable biotic interactions in the Neotropics. In the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, several species of birds (especially hummingbirds), bats, and non‐flying mammals, as well as one lizard feed on nectar, often act as pollinators and contribute to seed output of...

Although the herbaceous plants concentrate the diversity of vascular plants in the largest dry forest of South America, the Brazilian Caatinga, their responses to environmental modifications are poorly known. We assessed the taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional responses of herb communities to independent gradients of annual rainfall (510−940 mm)...

Resilient secondary tropical forests? Although deforestation is rampant across the tropics, forest has a strong capacity to regrow on abandoned lands. These “secondary” forests may increasingly play important roles in biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation, and landscape restoration. Poorter et al . analyzed the patterns of recovery i...

Animal pollination services provide multiple benefits to humanity as they contribute to 35% of global food production and directly account for up to 40% of the dietary nutrient supply to humanity worldwide. Population declines of vertebrate and invertebrate pollination vectors may threaten human nutrition and well-being, particularly where agricult...

1. Despite evidence about the contribution of Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs) to conservation, prevailing strategies still seek their separation from nature, often triggering conflicts. Current pledges to expand global protected area coverage suggest a need for critical analysis of governance quality and the way conservation intera...

We draw attention to potential pollinator species that have not yet been reported as crop pollinators but could likely contribute to agricultural productivity. We refer to this as the neglected diversity of crop pollinators, which we argue should not be excluded from conservation strategies and land-use planning. We used Brazil as case study for at...

Understanding patterns of tropical forest resilience is a central challenge in conservation ecology particularly in seasonally-dry tropical forests, where anthropogenic disturbance and climate change are pervasive threats. Here, we investigate the recovery rate and community organization of dung beetles along a Caatinga dry forest regeneration clin...

The exploitation of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) has been encouraged in order to reconcile economic uses, biodiversity conservation and the provision of ecosystem services. In this paper we investigate how increments on the açaí palm density (Euterpe oleracea) via forest management change tree assemblages across 47 plots in the Amazon estuari...

Seasonally dry tropical forests are characterized by several months of drought. Cenostigma microphyllum is a native woody species widely found in a seasonally dry tropical forest. These forests are in need of restoration and C. microphyllum is a species that can be used to this end. We studied, 1) acute water deficiency using plant in pot, and 2) c...

Aim Here we examine the functional profile of regional tree species pools across the latitudinal distribution of Neotropical moist forests, and test trait–climate relationships among local communities. We expected opportunistic strategies (acquisitive traits, small seeds) to be overrepresented in species pools further from the equator, but also in...

Woody plant resprouting has received considerable attention in the last two decades as human disturbances continue to encroach on terrestrial ecosystems globally. We examined the regeneration mechanisms of a Caatinga dry forest in the context of slash-and-burn agriculture and resprouting ability of the local flora. We excavated two old fields (from...

Community assembly arguably drives the provision of ecosystem services because they critically depend on which and how species coexist. We examine conspicuous cases of 'winner and loser' replacements (WLRs) in tropical forests to provide a framework integrating drivers, impacts on ecological organization, and reconfiguration of ecosystem service pr...

Biodiversity maintenance in human-modified landscapes largely depends on spatial variations in species composition (β-diversity), but the impact of human disturbance on β-diversity remains poorly understood. We examined how taxonomic and phylogenetic β-diversity of woody plant communities in the Brazilian Caatinga dry forest respond to two emerging...

Banks-Leite et al. (2021) claim that our suggestion of preserving ≥40% forest cover lacks evidence and can be problematic. We find these claims unfounded, and discuss why conservation planning urgently requires valuable, well-supported, and feasible general guidelines like the 40% criterion. Using region-specific thresholds worldwide is unfeasible...

Tropical forest regeneration has gained renewed interest in recent years as secondary forests have being considered biodiversity repositories and a key source for globally relevant ecosystem services as climate regulation and carbon sequestration and storage. Here, we address the regeneration of a Caatinga dry forest in the context of slash-and-bur...

Banks-Leite et al. (2021) claim that our suggestion of preserving ≥40% forest cover lacks evidence and can be problematic. We find these claims unfounded, and discuss why conservation planning urgently requires valuable, well-supported, and feasible general guidelines like the 40% criterion. Using region-specific thresholds worldwide is unfeasible...

Assim como os frutos de algumas plantas, o Curso de Campo Ecologia e Conservação da Caatinga - que gerou o livro Ecologia e Conservação da Caatinga - também veio de uma semente, uma concepção inicial. A tradição de realizar cursos de imersão em campo não é nova. Ela surge como uma necessidade de treinar/aperfeiçoar e repetir técnicas/etapas do méto...