Murilo Sversut DiasUniversity of Brasília | UnB · Department of Ecology
Murilo Sversut Dias
PhD
Determining the drivers of global and regional aquatic diversity
About
51
Publications
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Introduction
Hi, my name is Murilo S Dias, I'm Professor at the University of Brasilia and an ecologist interested in community ecology, macroecology and biogeography, mainly focused on freshwater organisms. My main interests are in understanding variation of biodiversity on space and time, and I rely heavily on large data sets, simulations and statistical modelling (mainly in R environment). I really enjoy working in collaboration, so please send me a message if I can be of any assistance.
Additional affiliations
September 2015 - March 2016
March 2012 - August 2015
March 2006 - May 2008
Education
October 2019 - March 2021
Publications
Publications (51)
The Neotropical region hosts 4,225 freshwater fish species, ranking first among the world’s most diverse regions for freshwater fishes. Our NEOTROPICAL FRESHWATER FISHES data set is the first to produce a large-scale Neotropical freshwater fish inventory, covering the entire Neotropical region from Mexico and the Caribbean in the north, to the sout...
Defining the number and geographical borders of regions containing similar organisms and high levels of endemism can shed light on the evolution and distribution of life on Earth. We provide an historical overview of studies delineating the global biogeographical regions of freshwater organisms, mainly focusing on fish, to understand whether aquati...
Aim
Phylogenetic relatedness among species can provide useful information on the diversification history and past dispersal events that may have shaped contemporary assemblages. Here, using of the most comprehensive fish occurrence database currently available and a global molecular phylogeny of ray-finned fishes, we evaluate the respective roles o...
Landscape dynamics and river network rearrangements are widely thought to shape the diversity of Neotropical freshwater fishes, the most species-rich continental vertebrate fauna on Earth. Yet the effects of hydrogeographic changes on fish dispersal and diversification remain poorly understood. Here we integrate an unprecedented occurrence dataset...
To determine the effect of rivers, environmental conditions, and isolation by distance on the distribution of species in Amazonia. Location: Brazilian Amazonia. Time period: Current. Major taxa studied: Birds, fishes, bats, ants, termites, butterflies, ferns ? lyco-phytes, gingers and palms. We compiled a unique dataset of biotic and abiotic inform...
The Tocantins-Araguaia Basin is one of the largest river systems in South America, located entirely within Brazilian territory. In the last decades, capital-concentrating activities such as agribusiness, mining, and hydropower promoted extensive changes in land cover, hydrology, and environmental conditions. These changes are jeopardizing the basin...
The Tocantins-Araguaia Basin is one of the largest river systems in South America, located entirely within Brazilian
territory. In the last decades, capital-concentrating activities such as agribusiness, mining, and hydropower promoted
extensive changes in land cover, hydrology, and environmental conditions. These changes are jeopardizing the basin...
Several drivers explain the global distribution of all reef fish. However, whether these drivers also explain the distribution and traits of a functional subgroup involving cleaner fishes remain unclear. Here we examine the variation in traits of cleaner fishes and test whether historical, environmental, ecological and geographical drivers are corr...
Aim: Community phylogenetics provides important information about the evolutionary and ecological factors help structure regional species assemblages. Here, we analyze phylogenetic diversity (phylodiversity) patterns among fish species in 97 sub-drainages of the Amazon basin, to evaluate the roles of historical and contemporary processes in generat...
Resumo: Estudos em Macroecologia lidam com padrões e processos em amplas escalas (espacial, temporal e taxonômica) que são muito abrangentes para serem estudados com experimentos replicados, manipulativos e controlados como é feito tradicionalmente na ecologia. Estudos macroecológicos têm sido primordialmente realizados com foco em vertebrados e pl...
Remote underwater videos are widely employed to assess the structure and composition of reef fish assemblages but the sampling effort employed on each survey differs considerably, indicating that both the number of assessments and video length could be optimized. We searched for this optimal sampling effort in remote video samples to conduct rapid...
• The Amazon basin has been subjected to extreme climatic events and according to climate change projections this hydrosystem could face changes in the natural dynamic of flood cycles that support the feeding and reproduction of many fish species, threatening aquatic biodiversity.
• Protected areas (PAs) are the main tools used to safeguard the bio...
Climate change is a major threat to biodiversity. Rainfall patterns over recent decades have changed and extreme events are intensifying. These are expected to affect the hydrological dynamics and structure of forest streams in the Amazon basin, which strongly depend on the local rainfall regime, with potential consequences for local fish assemblag...
To determine the effect of rivers, environmental conditions, and isolation by distance on the distribution of species in Amazonia. Location: Brazilian Amazonia. Time period: Current. Major taxa studied: Birds, fishes, bats, ants, termites, butterflies, ferns ? lyco-phytes, gingers and palms. We compiled a unique dataset of biotic and abiotic inform...
Understanding how assemblages are structured in space and the factors promoting their distributions is one of the main goals in Ecology, however, studies regarding the distribution of organisms at larger scales remain biased towards terrestrial groups. We attempt to understand if the structure of stream fish metacommunities across a Neotropical eco...
Humans introduce non‐native species by such means as the deliberate release of fish into fresh waters and through the commercial trade. The guppy, Poecilia reticulata Peters, 1859, is commonly used in aquariums and to control disease vectors, and now occurs in many areas outside its natural distribution. We identified where it was initially detecte...
Conserving freshwater habitats and their biodiversity in the Amazon Basin is a growing challenge in the face of rapid anthropogenic changes. We used the most comprehensive fish-occurrence database available (2355 valid species; 21,248 sampling points) and 3 ecological criteria (irreplaceability, representativeness, and vulnerability) to identify bi...
Using the most comprehensive fish occurrence database, we evaluated the importance of ecological and historical drivers in diversity patterns of subdrainage basins across the Amazon system. Linear models reveal the influence of climatic conditions, habitat size and sub-basin isolation on species diversity. Unexpectedly, the species richness model a...
Using the most comprehensive fish occurrence database, we evaluated the importance of ecological and historical drivers in diversity patterns of subdrainage basins across the Amazon system. Linear models reveal the influence of climatic conditions, habitat size and sub-basin isolation on species diversity. Unexpectedly, the species richness model a...
The Brazilian Cerrado, one of the most threatened biomes of our planet, illustrates the challenges and opportunities of reconciling economic development with conservation of land and water ecosystems. Here, we assess the state of the art of and present new information on the impacts of agricultural expansion, dams, and water use, and make recommend...
To define the major biogeographical regions and transition zones for freshwater fish species. Strictly freshwater species of actinopterygian fish (i.e. excluding marine and amphidromous fish families). We based our bioregionalization on a global database of freshwater fish species occurrences in drainage basins, which, after filtering, includes 11,...
Marine communities vary across spatial scales due to changes in habitat structure, wave exposure, depth and anthropogenic activities. Here, we quantitatively characterized, for the first time, the reef fish assemblages and benthic communities in six sites around São Tomé Island, in the Tropical Eastern Atlantic region. We performed 139 underwater v...
Diversity patterns are determined by biogeographic, energetic, and anthropogenic factors, yet few studies have combined them into a large‐scale framework in order to decouple and compare their relative effects on fish faunas. Using an empirical dataset derived from 1527 underwater visual censuses (UVC) at 18 oceanic islands (five different marine p...
Aim
We studied the underlying biotic and abiotic drivers of network patterns in marine cleaning mutualisms (species feeding upon ectoparasites and injured tissues of others) at large spatial scales.
Location: Eleven marine biogeographical provinces.
Time period: 1971–2018.
Major taxa studied: Reef fish and shrimps.
Methods
We combined field and li...
Aim To define the major biogeographical regions and transition zones for freshwater fish species.
Taxon Strictly freshwater species of actinopterygian fish (i.e., excluding marine and amphidromous fish families).
Methods We based our bioregionalisation on a global database of freshwater fish species occurrences in drainage basins, which, after fi...
A growing interest is devoted to global-scale approaches in ecology and evolution that examine patterns and determinants of species diversity and the threats resulting from global change. These analyses obviously require global datasets of species distribution. Freshwater systems house a disproportionately high fraction of the global fish diversity...
Human activities are often implicated in the contemporary extinction of contemporary species. Concerning riverine fishes, the major biotic and abiotic threats widely cited include introduction of non-native species, habitat fragmentation and homogenization in stream flow dynamics due to the damming of rivers, dumping of organic loadings, degradatio...
Studies about fish assemblages in Brazilian streams have grown in recent years, however, it remains unclear whether this increase is followed by increments in the diversity of addressed topics and theoretical frameworks adopted by researchers. We performed a systematic search for Brazilian studies on stream fish assemblages recording study region,...
Cleaning interactions are an essential feature of ma- rine ecosystems since they help maintain a healthy communi- ty. However, knowledge on the magnitude of the cleaning interactions in the Tropical Eastern Pacific (TEP) is scarce, especially in remote places like oceanic islands. Here, we describe for the first time the cleaning interactions among...
This is a Guide for the Fishes of Reserva Ducke, a 10,000 ha Forest Reserva at Central Brazilian Amazon. The guide brings photos of alive specimens for almost all the 70 recorded species, together with a basic description and information on biology and natural history. Additionally, the book have a series of identification keys for all the families...
With around 15% of all described freshwater fish species in the world, the Amazon Basin is by far the most fish species-rich freshwater ecosystem on the planet. In this opinion paper, a rough evaluation is given on just how vulnerable Amazonian freshwater fishes are to ongoing climate change. And to argue that current anthropogenic threats through...
A bacia Amazônica é mundialmente famosa pelas extensas áreas de florestas alagáveis, que são periodicamente inundadas durante as cheias dos grandes rios. Essas planícies são extremamente importantes para a produtividade dos rios (Junk et al., 1989) e são usadas como sítios de alimentação, reprodução e refúgio por uma infinidade de espécies de peixe...
Human activities are often linked to contemporary species extinctions. For riverine fishes, a highly studied and emblematic taxon, introduction of non-native species, damming of rivers, increasing water pollution and sediment loads, eutrophication, habitat degradation and water abstraction for human and agricultural consumption are believed to be a...
The relative importance of contemporary and historical processes is central for understanding biodiversity patterns. While several studies show that past conditions can partly explain the current biodiversity patterns, the role of history remains elusive. We reconstructed palaeo-drainage basins under lower sea level conditions (Last Glacial Maximum...
Con el 15% de todos los peces de agua dulce descritos en el mundo, la cuenca amazónica es el sistema de agua dulce más
biodiverso del planeta. Hoy en día, losfactores principalesde degradaciónde los ecosistemas deagua dulceen la regiónamazónica
son la rápida expansión de las infraestructuras y actividades económicas. Estas perturbaciones provocan i...
Although habitat fragmentation fosters extinctions, it also increases the probability of speciation by promoting and maintaining divergence among isolated populations. Here we test for the effects of two isolation factors that may reduce population dispersal within river networks as potential drivers of freshwater fish speciation: 1) the position o...
Macrophyte rafts can enhance fish dispersal in the Amazon River basin, and determining whether raft properties (e.g., size
and plant species richness) can predict fish species richness and composition is important in order to understand the underlying
factors of fish dispersal. We tested for a relationship between the plant species richness and fis...
In Amazonia reduced-impact logging, which is meant to reduce environmental disturbance by controlling stem-fall directions and minimizing construction of access roads, has been applied to large areas containing thousands of streams. We investigated the effects of reduced-impact logging on environmental variables and the composition of fish in fores...
Introdução Estudos de cascatas tróficas relacionam efeitos de um nível trófico sobre outros níveis dentro dos ecossistemas (Begon et al., 2006). Quando a cascata inicia-se a partir do topo da cadeia trófica caracteriza-se o controle de cima para baixo (top-down) e, a partir da base da cadeia, o controle de baixo para cima (bottom-up). A regulação b...
Introdução A seleção de habitat pode ser definida como as escolhas que os indivíduos fazem por locais com condições ambientais favoráveis (Orians, 1991). Essa seleção de condições pode variar de espécie para espécie e entre localidades (Rosenzweig, 1991). Além de características abióticas tais como temperatura e umidade, a quantidade de recursos (e...
Projects
Projects (5)
Our objective is to conduct a literature review on interspecific interactions in freshwater fish, showing the main families and the most recurrent interactions in the studies.
We aim to determine precisaly a minimum sample size that better characterize the community in surveys of stream fish. In addiction, we will explore if the minimum sampling effort change between preserved and impacted streams.
The main threats to freshwater systems and organisms are direct changes in habitat due to anthropic impacts. The vulnerability of these ecosystems has been discussed in the last decades, however, little has been done for the conservation of these systems. Nowadays the Amazon is considered the second most threatened biome in Brazil due to the advance of deforestation and dams. Thus, using SDM techniques together with spatial prioritization techniques, it is possible to indicate the best areas for the conservation of fish species in the Amazon region. As well, to evaluate the Amazon sub-basins vulnerability to multiple impacts.
