Sérvio P. Ribeiro

Federal University of Ouro Preto · Department of Biodiversity, Evolution and Environment

Insect declines have been reported globally but whilst island ecosystems are potentially facing exacerbated challenges, no long-term studies (LTER) have confirmed this trend. This study utilises the first available LTER data on island invertebrates, targeting epigeal and canopy arthropods from the Azores, and covering over 20 years in three distinc...

Arboreal ants, abundant and dominant insects in tropical forests, interact with the bacterial communities of the canopies, especially with the bacteria associated with leaf surfaces. In this study, we investigated what kind of interactions exist between the bacterial community associated with the cuticle of a polydomous arboreal ant and the bacteri...

Understanding collective insect behaviour is a pertinent ecological problem that has to be solved. The fact that some of these flocks are the largest cooperative units in nature has a tremendous impact on our knowledge of nature. Reliable data sampling contributes to the challenge’s complexity in some ways. Based on convolutional neural networks, t...

Dengue is one of the most important arboviruses worldwide, with currently approximately 2.5 billion people at risk of becoming infected, mainly in tropical countries. The present study evaluated the influence of climatic variables on the incidence of dengue fever in an endemic urban area. A time series study of cases was carried out with all confir...

Despite the considerable morbidity and mortality of yellow fever virus (YFV) infections in Brazil, our understanding of disease outbreaks is hampered by limited viral genomic data. Here, through a combination of phyloge-netic and epidemiological models, we reconstructed the recent transmission history of YFV within different epidemic seasons in Bra...

Despite the considerable morbidity and mortality of yellow fever virus (YFV) infections in Brazil, our understanding of disease outbreaks is hampered by limited viral genomic data. Here, through a combination of phyloge-netic and epidemiological models, we reconstructed the recent transmission history of YFV within different epidemic seasons in Bra...

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...

Citation: Rosa-Silva, H.; Cardoso, J.G.; Reis-Júnior, R.; Corgosinho, P.H.C.; Faria, M.L.; Ribeiro, S.P.; Abreu, F.V.S.; Cuevas-Reyes, P.; Borges, M.A.Z. Coexistence and Spatial Distribution of Invasive and Sylvatic Container-Breeding Mosquitoes in City-Forest Ecotone within the Brazilian Semi-arid. Diversity 2023, 15, 822. https:// Abstract: Aedes...

A relevant challenge to be tackled in ecology is comprehending collective insect behaviors. This understanding significantly impacts the understanding of nature, as some of these flocks are the most extensive cooperative units in nature. A part of the difficulty in tackling this challenge comes from reliable data sampling. This work presents a nove...

Background & objectives: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the death rate was reportedly 5-8 fold lower in India which is densely populated as compared to less populated western countries. The aim of this study was to investigate whether dietary habits were associated with the variations in COVID-19 severity and deaths between Western and Indian popul...

Despite the considerable morbidity and mortality of Yellow fever virus (YFV) infections in Brazil, as well as its widespread presence in non-human primate host, our understanding of disease outbreaks is hampered by limited viral genomic data. Determining the timing and spatial corridors of YFV spread, as well as the geographic hotspots that link th...

Ophiocordyceps australis (Ascomycota, Hypocreales, Ophiocordycipitaceae) is a classic entomopathogenic fungus that parasitizes ants (Hymenoptera, Ponerinae, Ponerini). Nonetheless, according to our results, this fungal species also exhibits a complete set of genes coding for plant cell wall degrading Carbohydrate-Active enZymes (CAZymes), enabling...

Human Activity Recognition (HAR) using artificial intelligence has a broad range of applications. These applications reach a set of disciplines and areas as home activity monitoring, sports, traffic, and healthcare. Using Edge Computing as a tool to enhance is a recent but promising research front. In this work, we propose an architecture for an Ed...

Consumer pressure on species interactions is considered one of the major forces in organizing ecological communities. Dominant ants are commonly reported to be efficient predators and, by constantly patrolling their territories, can regulate prey / enemy population sizes and distribution. However, cascading effects involving dominant ants in tropic...

Intelligent healthcare systems are a topic of interest in recent approaches due to novel possibilities created from edge hardware and software development. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic displayed the urge to speed up technological systems development to aid medical facilities. In this context, solutions must enhance the experience of both patients...

Background Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is a neglected tropical disease endemic in several countries, with as much as 97% of cases in the Americas attributable to Brazil. Despite considerable investment in disease control, Belo Horizonte is one of the Brazilian municipalities with the highest mortality rates. The present study aimed to investigate t...

We investigated whether a set of phylogeographical tracked emergent events of Orthocoronavirinae were related to developed, urban and polluted environments worldwide. We explored coronavirus records in response to climate (rainfall parameters), population density, CO2 emission, Human Developmental Index (HDI) and deforestation. We contrasted enviro...

One of the indicators of ecosystem health is leaf health. Among the leading indicators studied in leaves, herbivory and disease presence are relevant indicators of ecosystem behavior. Several methods in the literature study leaf damage estimation processes. Most of the previous studies display the usage of methods that display limited generalism. I...

Tropical tree-climbing lianas form paths that benefit foraging of dominant ants which might protect the host tree against herbivores. In contrast, lianas are often associated with negative effects on growth and reproduction of host trees due to light obstruction, structural stress and other negative effects. It is unclear if dominant ants could mit...

Vídeo de Divulgação Científica Artigo original: Can the introduction of non-native fish induce variation in life-history traits of a native species in a neotropical lake? Marine and Freshwater Research Autores: Thaís Paula de Araújo, Ludmila Silva Brighenti, Bárbara Martins Dolabela, Sérvio Pontes Ribeiro, Hélio Batista dos Santos e Ralph Gruppi...

The construction of shelters on plants by arthropods might influence other organisms via changes in colonization, community richness, species composition, and functionality. Arthropods, including beetles, caterpillars, sawflies, spiders, and wasps often interact with host plants via the construction of shelters, building a variety of structures suc...

Current climate change is disrupting biotic interactions and eroding biodiversity worldwide. However, species sensitive to aridity, high temperatures and climate variability might find shelter in microclimatic refuges, such as leaf rolls built by arthropods. To explore how the importance of leaf shelters for terrestrial arthropods changes with lati...

Ecotones between tropical forests and lakes compose an ecosystem interconnection with a high abundance of terrestrial invertebrates, which represent an outstanding resource for the aquatic fauna. However, there is still little quantitative information on tropical forest contribution in terms of invertebrate inputs into lacustrine systems and the fa...

One hundred years after the flu pandemic of 1918, the world faces an outbreak of a new severe acute respiratory syndrome, caused by a novel coronavirus. With a high transmissibility, the pandemic has spread worldwide, creating a scenario of devastation in many countries. By the middle of 2021, about 3% of the world population had been infected and...

Top predator fish, such as peacock bass (Cichla kelberi) and red-bellied piranha (Pygocentrus nattereri), were introduced in the lacustrine system of the Rio Doce basin and these introductions are associated with loss of aquatic biodiversity. The present work aims to investigate the life-history traits of a native species, thraira (Hoplias malabari...

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...

Being a Re-Emerging Infectious Disease, dengue causes 390 million cases globally and is prevalent in many urban areas in South America. Understanding the fine-scale relationships between dengue incidence and environmental and socioeconomic factors can guide improved disease prevention strategies. This ecological study examines the association betwe...

Plants adapted to different habitats exhibit differences in functional traits and these characteristics are influenced by soil properties. We tested the hypothesis that soil resource availability influences the functional traits of plants, affecting therefore her-bivory levels. We examined three Byrsonima plant species with different life forms tha...

The patterns of insect movement are the cumulate product of many individual decisions and can be shaped by the way morphology and behaviour interacts with landscape structure and composition. Hence, the ongoing process of habitat fragmentation increases the distance among suitable habitats and changes those in such a way that it may favour some mov...

Metalliferous soils can selectively shape plant species’ physiology towards tolerance of high metal concentrations that are usually toxic to organisms. Some adapted plant species tolerate and accumulate metal in their tissues. These metals can serve as an elemental defence but can also decrease growth. Our investigation explored the capacity of nat...

Hundred years after the flu pandemic of 1918, the world faces an outbreak of a new severe acute respiratory syndrome, caused by a novel coronavirus. With a high transmissibility, the pandemic spreads worldwide, creating a scenario of devastation in many countries. By the middle of 2021, about 3% of the world population has been infected and more th...

A second deadlier wave of COVID-19 and the causes of the recent public health collapse of Manaus are compared with the Spanish flu events in that city, and Brazil. Historic sanitarian problems, and its hub position in the Brazilian airway network are combined drivers of deadly events related to COVID-19. These drivers were amplified by misleading g...

Ecological environments research helps to assess the impacts on forests and managing forests. The usage of novel software and hardware technologies enforces the solution of tasks related to this problem. In addition, the lack of connectivity for large data throughput raises the demand for edge-computing-based solutions towards this goal. Therefore,...

Wood-boring beetles develop in live trees and dead wood, performing ecological services such as decomposition and regulation of forest resources. Species of the Cerambycidae family, widely distributed in the world, bore into the trunks of trees and dead wood in native and cultivated areas. The objective is to report the first host plant for Thoraci...

Ants are a major ecological group in tropical rainforests. Few studies in the Neotropics have documented the distribution of ants from the ground to the canopy, and none have included the understorey. A previous analysis of an intensive arthropod study in Panama, involving 11 sampling methods, showed that the factors influencing ant beta diversity...

Plants adapted to different habitats exhibit differences in functional traits and these characteristics are influenced by soil properties. We tested the hypothesis that soil resource availability influences the functional traits of plants, affecting therefore herbivory levels. We examined three Byrsonima plant species with different life forms that...

Leaf damage estimation is an important research method, metric, and topic regarding both agricultural and ecological studies. The majority of previous studies that approach shape reconstruction work with parametric curves, lacking generality when treating leaves with different shapes. Other appliances try to calculate the damage without estimating...

The leaf damage estimation is a relevant research topic regarding both agricultural and ecological studies. Most approaches lack generality when treating leaves with different shapes. In this work, we propose a procedure to predict the original leaf shape and calculate its defoliation based on a Conditional Generative Adversarial Network (Condition...

How much leaf area do insects eat? A data set of insect herbivory sampled globally with a standardized protocol. Ecology 102(4): Abstract. Herbivory is ubiquitous. Despite being a potential driver of plant distribution and performance, herbivory remains largely undocumented. Some early attempts have been made to review, globally, how much leaf area...

Ants have efficient and well-studied social immunity mechanisms, which prevent the colony contamination. Little is known about how workers keep their outside territory clear of diseases. We investigated the interactions between Azteca chartifex ants, their associated bacteria and bacteria on the phyllosphere of Byrsonima sericea trees, comparing pl...

Herbivory is ubiquitous. Despite being a potential driver of plant distribution and performance, herbivory remains largely undocumented. Some early attempts have been made to review, globally, how much leaf area is removed through insect feeding. Kozlov et al., in one of the most comprehensive reviews regarding global patterns of herbivory, have co...

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...

Current climate change is disrupting biotic interactions and eroding biodiversity worldwide. However, species sensitive to drought, high temperatures and climate variability might persist in microclimatic refuges, such as leaf shelters built by arthropods. We conducted a distributed experiment across an 11,790 km latitudinal gradient to explore how...

The Rio Doce State Park (“PERD”) is the largest Atlantic Forest remnant in Minas Gerais State, Brazil, with predominantly semi-deciduous forests. The longhorned beetles of the Cerambycinae subfamily (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) are distributed worldwide, developing on healthy, stressed or recently dead trees. Faunistic surveys are necessary to unders...

The spread of SARS-CoV-2 and the distribution of cases worldwide followed no clear biogeographic, climatic, or cultural trend. Conversely, the internationally busiest cities in all countries tended to be the hardest hit, suggesting a basic, mathematically neutral pattern of the new coronavirus early dissemination. We tested whether the number of fl...

We provide the first evidence of a recent invasion of Aedes aegypti (Linnaeus in Hasselquist, 1762) and Aedes albopictus (Skuse 1894), followed by dengue virus, in tropical montane cities in south-eastern Brazil, Mariana, and Ouro Preto, at mid and high altitudes, respectively. Long-term temperature variation, dengue public data, and sampling of im...

Background We investigated a likely scenario of COVID-19 spreading in Brazil through the complex airport network of the country, for the 90 days after the first national occurrence of the disease. After the confirmation of the first imported cases, the lack of a proper airport entrance control resulted in the infection spreading in a manner directl...

54) Título: CAPACETE INTELIGENTE PARA PESQUISAS DE CAMPO EM ECOLOGIA (51) Int. Cl.: A42B 3/30; A42B 3/04. (52) CPC: A42B 3/30; A42B 3/0433; A42B 3/0406. (71) Depositante(es): UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE OURO PRETO. (72) Inventor(es): RICARDO AUGUSTO RABELO OLIVEIRA; SÉRVIO PONTES RIBEIRO; SAUL EMANUEL DELABRIDA SILVA; MATEUS COELHO SILVA. (57) Resumo:...

Recently, a wide array of epidemiological models have been developed to guide public health actors in containing the rapid dissemination of the new severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), cause of COVID-19. Despite their usefulness, many epidemiological models recently developed to understand the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and infec...

Traditionally, most studies have described the organization of host–parasite interaction networks by considering only few host groups at limited geographical extents. However, host–parasite relationships are merged within different taxonomic groups and factors shaping these interactions likely differ between host and parasite groups, making group‐l...

Butterfly species often synchronize their life cycles to seasonality, as increasing temperature and rainfall act as clues of resource availability. Nevertheless, human-made forest edges cause major changes in the microclimatic conditions that may jeopardize the synchrony between insects and favorable conditions for their emergence, conversely to na...

Background. We investigated a likely scenario of COVID-19 spreading in Brazil through the complex airport network of the country, for the 90 days after the first national occurrence of the disease. After the confirmation of the first imported cases, the lack of a proper airport entrance control resulted in the infection spreading in a manner direct...

Social insects utilise a complex spatial orientation system mediated by chemical signals. This study investigated how the foraging behavior of ants (Dorymyrmex thoracicus) varies depending upon the quantity of an available resource using a field experiment. Further, we demonstrated computationally that ant displacement is compatible with a model ba...

The widespread availability of wearable devices is evolving them into cooperative systems. Communication and distribution aspects such as the Internet of Things, Wireless Body Area Networks, and Local Wireless Networks provide the means to develop multi-device platforms. Nevertheless, the field research environment presents a specific feature set,...

Forest inventory and management are important topics to enhance environmental protection initiatives and policies. Thus, sampling processes inside the forest environment are normally manual and limited. These conditions nurture an increasing need for novel solutions to enhance environmental perception , especially in ground-sampling processes. In t...

Oceanic islands have been providing important insights on the structuring of ecological communities and, under the context of the present biodiversity crisis, they are paramount to assess the effects of biological invasions on community assembly. In this study we compare the taxonomic and functional diversity of insect herbivore assemblages associa...

Forest inventory and management are important topics to enhance environmental protection initiatives and policies. Thus, sampling processes inside the forest environment are normally manual and limited. These conditions nurture an increasing need for novel solutions to enhance environmental perception, especially in ground-sampling processes. In th...

Canopy ecology is a fast-growing field, but still a scientific frontier in many ecological aspects. For instance, the hypothesis that tree traits shape patterns in ant-plant interactions lacks data, notably for tropical canopies in different successional stages. In this study, we investigated canopy traits, such as tree height, the presence of extr...

The measurements of biotic and abiotic parameters in natural conditions are essential for ecologists. Wearable devices are changing the way how scientists can measure their study subject in extreme conditions. In this work, a new model of wearable device is presented to be used during the tree climbing performed by ecologists. The device architectu...

A large number of invertebrates use dead wood as shelter, food, and as a microclimate refuge. Ecological succession in this substrate depends on primary colonization, stimulating or inhibiting future successions. Twig girdler beetles girdle and lay eggs inside the bark of branches and trunks of different host plants. Branch girdling blocks the phlo...

Increasing deforestation worldwide has expanded the interfaces between fragmented forests and non-forest habitats. Human-made edges are very different from the original forest cover, with different microclimatic conditions. Conversely, the natural transitions (i.e., ecotones) are distinct from human-made forest edges. The human-made forest edges ar...