Raquel Carvalho

University of São Paulo | USP · Institute of Advanced Studies (IEA) (São Paulo)

Biological responses to a disturbance can vary among taxa, which challenges the use of bioindicators for representing biodiversity responses more broadly. Linking ecological traits to disturbance response helps clarify what different bioindicator groups are actually indicating, providing a mechanistic basis for predicting the responses of other tax...

Biotic communities in heterogeneous agricultural landscapes can be shaped by both the land use of local patches and the structure of surrounding landscapes. However, studies usually focus on one or the other factor, limiting our ability to propose management guidelines for the conservation of biodiversity in human‐modified landscapes. We used a sit...

Graphical abstract Highlights d Ecological metadata were compiled for 7,694 sites across the Brazilian Amazon d Accessibility and proximity to research facilities influenced research probability d Knowledge gaps are greater in uplands than in wetlands and aquatic habitats d Undersampled areas overlap predicted hotspots of climate change and defores...

Interdisciplinary synthesis research has been promoting significant advances in expanding academic knowledge. However, its application to address social-ecological problems poses challenges, typical of transdisciplinary research and co-production initiatives. Based on the experience of seven working groups from a Brazilian syn- thesis nucleus dedic...

The effects of land-use change on biodiversity can be idiosyncratic, varying not only across taxa and land-use type, but also between different levels and dimensions of diversity. Using a species-level phylogeny and morphological traits to build a functional dendrogram, we compared the phylogenetic and functional diversity and the trait composition...

The achievement of international forest restoration goals requires economically viable land-use options. The Brazilian Atlantic Forest is a priority area for ecosystem restoration, as it is widely deforested to make place for intensive agriculture and one of the most threatened biodiversity hotspots in the world. We systematically reviewed existing...

Purpose of Review In this paper, we synthesize the status and trends of studies assessing the effects of landscape structure and changes on zoonotic and vector-borne disease risk in the Tropical America region (i.e., spanning from Mexico to southern South America). Understanding how landscape structure affects disease emergence is critical to desig...

The Brazilian Amazon is one of Earth’s most biodiverse and ecologically important regions. However, research investments for biodiversity in the biome are disproportionately low compared with other regions of Brazil. In 2022, the Amazon received 13% of master's, doctoral and postdoctoral scholarships and hosted 11% of all researchers working in bio...

Interactions between plants and herbivores are central in most ecosystems, but their strength is highly variable. The amount of variability within a system is thought to influence most aspects of plant-herbivore biology, from ecological stability to plant defense evolution. Our understanding of what influences variability, however, is limited by sp...

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time, and attempts to address it require a clear understanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space. While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environme...

Zoonotic diseases represent 75% of emerging infectious diseases worldwide, and their emergence is mainly attributed to human‐driven changes in landscapes. Land use change, especially the conversion of natural areas to agricultural use, has the potential to impact hosts and vector dynamics, affecting pathogen transmission risk. While these links are...

• As pesquisas ecológicas e a compilação e curadoria de dados científicos são atividades fundamentais para a compreensão das mudanças na biodiversidade da Amazônia; • As pesquisas ecológicas ainda estão concentradas em locais mais acessíveis e próximos às instituições de pesquisa; • A Amazônia é a região do país que menos recebe investimento para p...

1. The replacement of natural systems with agricultural lands is the main factor resulting in land use change in tropical regions. Tropical savannas cover more than 20% of the global land surface, and one‐fifth of the world's population depends directly on these systems. 2. Here, we aim to understand how the conversion of tropical savanna into exot...

Raw data and code for the analyses on research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia. Briefly, the code reproduces the Random Forest models and the intersection of research probability with susceptibility to current and future anthropogenic disturbances, performs a site-level analysis of the resulting outputs; and then illustrates the building...

Introduction Land-use change has tremendous negative impacts on ecosystems that often assessed by using indicator taxa, such as dung beetles. Commonly, changes in dung beetle community attributes are used to evaluate habitat disturbance. Within species, changes in functional traits could also be informative, but are rarely used. Aims/methods Our g...

Environmental impacts of conventional agriculture have generated interest in sustainable agriculture. Biological pest control is a fundamental tool, and ants are key players providing ecological services, as well as some disservices. We have used a meta-analytical approach to investigate the contribution of ants to biological control, considering t...

The conversion of natural habitats into anthropogenic uses is a key driver of global biodiversity loss, but effects can vary among taxa and diversity metrics. This has important implications for the use of bioindicators in land management. We evaluated the local‐scale responses of multiple faunal taxa to land‐use change in the Brazilian Cerrado mea...

Ants, an ecologically successful and numerically dominant group of animals, play key ecological roles as soil engineers, predators, nutrient recyclers, and regulators of plant growth and reproduction in most terrestrial ecosystems. Further, ants are widely used as bioindicators of the ecological impact of land use. We gathered information of ant sp...

Studies comparing different land covers clearly show that land-use change commonly affects animal communities and the ecological functions they play in ecosystems. However, we lack a good understanding of the effects that more subtle changes, those occurring within a land cover type, can have on ecological functions of animals, and if these are als...

The conversion of natural areas into agricultural systems and silviculture is the greatest threat to biodiversity in tropical ecosystems such as the Brazilian savanna (Cerrado). This landscape transformation could lead to the loss of native species, including ants that cannot tolerate the new environment dominated by exotic plant species, such as E...

Understanding the impacts of edge effects on ecological interactions plays an integral role in planning ecosystem recovery from human perturbations, as well as conservation of habitats. Edge effects related to forest fragmentation cause changes in species diversity that can disrupt ecological networks. Here, we evaluated how the diversity of, and i...

Trophobiotic interactions occur when phytophagous insects provide a sugary liquid, the honeydew, for ants and obtain defence against predators or parasitoids. The plants may indirectly benefit from an increased ant foraging activity by reducing the herbivorous abundance. These three trophic interactions have been previously studied for several spec...

Os besouros escarabeíneos são insetos pertencentes à ordem Coleoptera. Eles são conhecidos popularmente como “besouros rola-bosta” devido ao comportamento que várias espécies possuem de rodar bolotas de fezes e as enterrar no solo. Nossos levantamentos na região do Triângulo Mineiro mostram que os besouros escarabeíneos são muito abundantes e diver...

Dung beetles are an ecologically important group of insects globally, but the ecology of the Australian fauna is poorly known. Here, we report on the first ecological study of dung beetles in an Australian tropical savanna, documenting species composition, food preferences and responses to fire. Dung beetles were baited using dung from five types o...

1. Harvester ants are major seed predators in arid environments. However, given that many harvester ants are partly omnivorous and therefore potentially attracted to the elaiosomes of myrmecochorous seeds, it is unclear if these ants act as predators or dispersers when removing myrmecochorous seeds. 2. We describe the outcomes of interactions betwe...

Dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeinae) mediate many ecological functions that are important to maintain the ecosystem functioning of terrestrial environments. Although a large amount of literature explores the dung beetle-mediated ecological processes, little is known about the individual contribution from distinct species. Here, we aimed to exami...

Various organisms emit malodorous secretions against competitors, and the potential use of these secretions in pest management should be investigated. For example, some ant species feed on similar resources as dung beetles, which might have led to counter chemical defences in dung beetles. We tested whether pygidial secretions of the dung beetle Ca...

We evaluated the relative importance of dung type and intraspecific variation in biomass on dung beetle function by quantifying the ecological functions (dung removal and soil excavation) of two dung beetle species under laboratory conditions: Dichotomius bos, which preferentially feeds on herbivorous dung, and Chalcocopris hesperus, which is a gen...

Phytophagous insects may choose host plants based on conditions that enhance offspring performance. However, some insect species may also select plants based on attributes that enhance their own performance regardless of the consequences for offspring survival. An approach evaluating both hypotheses could provide a more comprehensive understanding...

Primary seed dispersal of many rain-forest seeds occurs through defecation by mammals. Dung beetles are attracted to the defecations and through their dung-processing behaviour these insects change the initial pattern of seed deposition. Final seed deposition patterns, i.e. where and how seeds are deposited after dung beetle activity has taken plac...

The dung roller beetle Canthon smaragdulus (Scarabaeinae) has a pair of pygidial glands whose secretions have different functions. However, the factors influencing the production of pygidial secretions in these dung beetles are not known. This study is the first to evaluate differences in the amount of pygidial secretions produced by C. smaragdulus...

Nest-site is an important resource for cavity-nesting ants, what limits colony establishment and structures ant community composition through competition. In ecosystems frequently disturbed by firecontinuous establishment of new colonies is crucial to the process of natural succession. Based on this perspective, we tested the hypothesis that fire r...