Marilia P. Gaiarsa

University of Zurich | UZH · Institut für Evolutionsbiologie und Umweltwissenschaften

Effectively promoting the stability and quality of ecosystem services involves the successful management of domesticated species and the control of introduced species. In the pollinator literature, interest and concern regarding pollinator species and pollinator health dramatically increased in recent years. Concurrently, the use of loaded terms wh...

Past and recent studies have focused on the effects of global change drivers such as species invasions on species extinction. However, as we enter the United Nations Decade of Ecosystem Restoration the aim must switch to understanding how invasive‐species management affects the persistence of the remaining species in a community. Focusing on plant‐...

Global change alters ecological communities and may disrupt ecological interactions and the provision of ecosystem functions. As ecological communities respond to global change, species may either go locally extinct or form novel interactions. To date, few studies have assessed how flexible species are in their interaction patterns, mainly due to t...

Este é o primeiro relatório do Observatório COVID19 - Grupo: Redes de Contágio analisando os dados de óbitos da cidade de São Paulo. Neste relatório, integramos os dados de óbitos da cidade de São Paulo entre os dias 02/04/2020 e 28/04/2020 com informações sobre o fluxo de vítimas entre os hospitais e os cemitérios e crematórios da cidade de São Pa...

Este é o primeiro relatório do Observatório COVID19 - Grupo: Redes de Contágio – Laboratório de Estudos de Defesa para a região Sul do Brasil. Combinamos dados de casos confirmados do novo coronavírus (SARS-CoV-2) para o Sul, disponíveis até o dia 17/04/2020, com análises estruturais da rede de rotas rodoviárias intra e interestaduais para estimarm...

Este é o primeiro relatório do Observatório COVID1920 - Grupo: Redes de Contágio – Laboratório de Estudos de Defesa para a região Nordeste do Brasil. Combinamos dados de casos confirmados do novo coronavírus (SARS-CoV-2) para o Nordeste, conforme disponível até o dia 02/04, com análises estruturais da rede de rotas rodoviárias intra e interestaduai...

Wildlife demography is typically studied at a single point in time within a year when species, often during the reproductive season, are more active and therefore easier to find. However, this provides only a low-resolution glimpse into demographic temporal patterns over time and may hamper a more complete understanding of the population dynamics o...

Species interactions are responsible for many key mechanisms that govern the dynamics of ecological communities. Variation in the way interactions are organized among species results in different network structures, which translates into a community's ability to resist collapse and change. To better understand the factors involved in dictating ongo...

Perturbations, such as fluctuations in abundance, can ripple across species assemblages through ecological interactions. Furthermore, the way in which ecological interactions are organized into a network and the interaction strengths connecting species may be important for cascading effects. Previous work revealed that network structure determines...

Many different concepts have been used to describe species’ roles in food webs (i.e., the ways in which species participate in their communities as consumers and resources). As each concept focuses on a different aspect of food-web structure, it can be difficult to relate these concepts to each other and to other aspects of ecology. Here we use the...

Despite the fact that natural selection underlies both traits and interactions, evolutionary models often neglect that ecological interactions may, and in many cases do, influence the evolution of traits. Here, we explore the interdependence of ecological interactions and functional traits in the pollination associations of hawkmoths and flowering...

Species and interactions are being lost at alarming rates and it is imperative to understand how communities assemble if we have to prevent their collapse and restore lost interactions. Using an 8-year dataset comprising nearly 20 000 pollinator visitation records, we explore the assembly of plant–pollinator communities at native plant restoration...

Enigmatic amphibian declines were first reported in southern and southeastern Brazil in the late 1980s and included several species of stream-dwelling anurans (families Hylodidae and Cycloramphidae). At that time, we were unaware of the amphibian-killing fungus Batra-chochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd); therefore, pollution, habitat loss, fragmentation...

Species differ in their need for conservation action and in their relative importance for conserving current and historic ecological and evolutionary diversity. Given the present biodiversity crisis and the lack of resources, threatened species must be differentiated from each other so that those presenting higher conservation priority can be atten...

Background/Question/Methods Species are interconnected in the communities through ecological interactions, such as mutualisms. In these webs of interacting species, changes in one species can propagate throughout the community, leading to cascading effects. In this study, we investigate if modules (semi-independent groups of highly interacting sp...

The evolution of arboreality in snakes is accompanied by modifications that are remarkably similar across species. Gravity is one of the most important selective agents, and arboreal snakes present adaptations to circumvent the gradient of pressure, including modifications on heart position (HP) and body slenderness (BS). However, the degree to whi...

Reflecting their exceptional radiation, snakes occur in different habitats and microhabitats and are able to eat numerous types of prey. The availability of good and comprehensive phylogenies for different snake's lineages together with natural history data provides an opportunity to explore how ecological traits diversified during their radiation....

Even though natural history information is crucial for answering key ecological, evolutionary, and conservation questions, basic studies are still lacking for Neotropical snakes. This study aims at contributing to the knowledge of the Neotropical tribe Pseudoboini, based on literature data, analysis of museum specimens and unpublished data. The tri...

Background / Purpose: The allocation of energy to produce ornaments and weapons may reduce survival. We tested the jaw size and color ornamentation on survival probability of the whiptail lizard, Cnemidophorus ocellifer. Main conclusion: Individuals with small jaw sizes and no ornamentation or larger jaw sizes and ornamentation have higher sur...