Sidinei Magela Thomaz

Universidade Estadual de Maringá | UEM · Departamento de Biologia

In this review, we aim to draw parallels between the principal concepts of invasion biology, developed mainly for terrestrial plants in temperate regions, with findings for macrophytes recorded in tropical inland waters. In these ecosystems, the most important abiotic and biotic filters influencing invasion success are related to water and sediment...

Our understanding of aquatic ecology and ecosystem functioning continuously improves. The special issues of Hydrobiologia on “Emerging Trends in Aquatic Ecology” each represent a collection of papers to testify to the variety of approaches and topics that concur in reaching the common aim to scientifcally underpin political and societal decis...

1. A growing body of evidence has shown that biological invasions cause shifts in species composition of communities in space and time. Although biological invasions are considered a major driver of biotic homogenisation worldwide, most previous studies were conducted at small spatial scales and over short time periods, which may have underestimate...

This year 2023, we have two milestones to celebrate for Hydrobiologia. Firstly, as Hydrobiologia was launched in March 1948, our journal is now 75 years young. Secondly, this is the first issue of volume 850. The second celebration requires a little nuance. Up to and including 2019, each of the 21 issues of Hydrobiologia was considered a separate v...

Aquatic macrophytes are generally recognized to influence fish–prey interactions. We assessed how fish consume particular foods, and how their foraging efficiency, trophic niche breadth, and niche overlap respond to gradients of macrophyte density and diversity. We sampled fish and macrophytes in 30 stands distributed over a 13.7 km stretch of the...

Poaceae has numerous species that are highly invasive thorough the planet. Urochloa, native to Africa, stands out in terms of invasion and impacts in South America. However, the correct identification of the species included in this genus is complex due to their morphological similarity with other species and there is a lack of studies involving th...

Invasive macrophytes are troublesome in a myriad of freshwater ecosystems worldwide. Before causing threats to recipient communities, invasive species face abiotic and biotic environmental factors during colonization and establishment that may hamper their success. We experimentally investigated the separate effects of one abiotic factor (sediment...

This editorial is aimed at explaining why the editors of Hydrobiologia are so concerned with biological nomenclature and why we ask our authors the utmost precision when referring to species in their papers... In these lines, we want to show that this is not just an old fashion formalism, but a necessity to correctly and univocally identify the bio...

In this review, we evaluate the contribution of Brazilian limnologists to research outputs on aquatic macrophyte ecology. We found a strong “adviser effect” of Professor F.A. Esteves on the Brazilian scientific production focused on aquatic macrophytes. In general, articles focused on a variety of themes, including, inter alia, the role of aquatic...

Humans are facilitating the introduction and range expansion of invasive alien species (IAS), which have negatively impacted ecological and socio-economic systems worldwide. Understanding the global diffusion of IAS is important for developing environmental policies and management strategies. We estimate the rate of increase and the doubling times...

River-floodplain ecosystems (RFEs) provide multiple ecosystem services. However, their importance may be underestimated because they are not summarized yet. In this paper, we review and update the benefits that RFEs provide to society, including supporting, regulating, provisioning, and cultural ecosystem services. Although considered a unique ecos...

Poaceae has numerous species that are highly invasive thorough the planet. Urochloa , native to Africa, stands out in terms of invasion and impacts in South America. However, the correct identification of the species included in this genus is complex due to their morphological similarity with other species and there is a lack of studies involving t...

Link para a reportagem: http://www.jornaldaciencia.org.br/edicoes/?url=http://jcnoticias.jornaldaciencia.org.br/16-gt-da-ablimno-divulga-nota-sobre-pl-4546/

This study aimed to investigate the relative importance of abiotic factors and biotic resistance (expressed as species richness of native macroinvertebrates), through a correlative niche-based model, to explain the abundance of the non-native mollusk Melanoides tuberculata. A total of 478 sites were sampled in six reservoirs in a Brazilian semi-ari...

Invasions are occurring very rapidly and they may be enhanced by alterations associated with climate change. Environments exposed to stronger droughts (supposed to occur in some regions in response to climate change) may become more susceptible to the invasion of certain species of plants. We experimentally measured the recovery of a native (Hymena...

While reducing the species richness of invaded communities is a well-known consequence of biological invasions, non-native species can also reduce variability between communities over time (i.e. beta diversity) in a process known as biotic homogenization. Although biotic homogenization due to non-native species is a common topic of theoretical revi...

Macrophytes are considered key components of aquatic ecosystems and they also provide multiple benefits for humans. In this review, I identified and exemplified 26 types of ecosystem services provided by macrophytes. The most important supporting services provided by these plants are related to nutrient cycling and provisioning of habitat, but macr...

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...

Nota técnica da Associação Brasileira de Limnologia para subsidiar as discussões sobre alterações das Áreas de Proteção Permanentes (APPs) urbanas propostas pelo PL 2.510/2019 (Câmara dos Deputados) e PL 1.869/2021 (Senado). A presente NT soma-se a outras que já discutiram os prejuízos decorrentes da aprovação dos PLs supramencionados, e adiciona u...

Submersed macrophytes have important ecological roles but non-native invasive species may affect biodiversity and water uses. We investigated the native macrophyte Egeria najas and the invasive Hydrilla verticillata and measured their maximum colonization depth and its relationship with Secchi disk depth, their biomass along the depth gradient and...

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 construction of four large reservoirs for hydroelectric power generation in the main channel of the Paraná River and many others in the tributaries has eliminated important wetlands, except over an area of ∼2000 km² between the reservoirs of the UHE Engenheiro Sérgio Motta (Porto Primavera) and the Itaipu. The up-river reservoirs created large...

Temporal fluctuations in water levels are important ecological driving forces in shallow aquatic ecosystems. Alterations to fluviometric levels are even more conspicuous after the construction of dams, and aquatic macrophytes respond with anatomical and morphological adaptations to such changes.. We performed an experiment to analyse the anatomical...

Diverse communities are more productive than less diverse ones because of two overyielding mechanisms: a selection effect and a complementarity effect, which operate in different ways. Moreover, ecosystem multifunctionality is expected to increase and become more stable with increasing species diversity. However, it is unclear how the aforementione...

The invasion success of non-native species depends on a variety of factors, and abiotic characteristics of invasive ranges and their native populations can offer resistance to non-native species establishment. Reservoirs, compared to natural lakes, can facilitate submerged macrophyte invasion because they provide favorable abiotic conditions to mac...

The flood pulse is the main driving force influencing river floodplain ecosystems. The dominant role of the flood pulse on the success of non-native species (NNSs) is what differentiates floodplains from other ecosystems, in terms of invasion. In this review, I discuss some patterns related to the performance of NNSs in response to the flood pulse....

Biological invasions and climate change are important drivers of biodiversity loss. In freshwater ecosystems, golden and zebra mussels are two highly aggressive invasive species that have caused ecological and economic damages in South and North America, respectively. Here, we used ecological niche models (ENMs) to investigate the invasive potentia...

Shifts between the alternative stable states have been a popular topic of ecological studies for over 50 years. However, identifying the mechanisms that drive these regime shifts remains a challenging task in the field of applied ecology and ecosystem management. Herein, we applied a Bayesian latent variable regression (BLR) to the dataset obtained...

Aquatic invasive species research has been surging in popularity, with the number of papers published in Hydrobiologia doubling since the previous decade. We overview contributions to the current Special Issue, including new studies on introduction and establishment, traits distinguishing high-impact invaders and their impacts, interactions between...

Riverine ecosystems can be conceptualized as ‘bioreactors’ (the riverine bioreactor) which retain and decompose a wide range of organic substrates. The metabolic performance of the riverine bioreactor is linked to their community structure, the efficiency of energy transfer along food chains, and complex interactions among biotic and abiotic enviro...

A pattern of increasing similarity among ecological communities in space or time is usually a consequence of anthropogenic pressures. However, natural causes such as flood pulse may also increase spatial similarity among lakes or temporal similarity within a lake. We assessed whether floods homogenize zooplankton and macrophyte assemblages in space...

Aquatic macrophytes increase habitat complexity and influence the structure of fish communities. We investigated relations between macrophyte stand complexity and functional alpha and beta diversity of fish. We sampled fish and plants in 30 macrophyte stands with differences in density and diversity in the Paraná River floodplain. The functional al...

Multimetric indices (MMIs) are common tools used to assess the biological status of ecosystems. However, not all the components of biological integrity have been equally addressed, since most of MMIs do not consider nonnative species, which are a great threat to ecosystems integrity. We performed a systematic review of how nonnative species have be...

Exotic species have invaded freshwater ecosystems, causing biodiversity loss of associated communities. We investigated the influence of the invasive macrophyte Hydrilla verticillata on taxonomic and functional richness, and on taxonomic and functional beta diversity of associated Chironomidae community, comparing this macrophyte with the structura...

Understanding how environmental factors and short-term evolution affect the growth of invasive plants is a central issue in Invasion Biology. For macrophytes, salinity is one of the main factors determining distribution along estuarine environments. Urochola arrecta is a Poaceae with high invasive potential in several freshwater and estuarine ecosy...

Understanding the roles of eutrophication and CO 2 enrichment in the invasive success of aquatic plants is an ecological challenge with relevance to climate change. We tested the hypotheses that (1) eutrophication of freshwaters increases the invasive success of the submersed aquatic plant Hydrilla verticillata; (2) CO 2-enrichment makes freshwater...

This opinion article examines the main consequences of the current environmental crisis in Brazil, including dismantling of environmental policies and protection of conservation areas, absence of mitigation measures for environmental disasters, and loosening of pesticides regulation, among others. All measures have been accompanied by a reduction i...

• To test hypotheses concerning the applicability of the Rapoport effect (RE: “species that occur at higher latitudes tend to have greater geographical range‐size than species which have ranges limited to latitudes closer to the equator”) to aquatic macrophytes at global scale, we analysed the world latitudinal distribution and range‐size of 1,083...

The potential role of positive interactions among co-invaders is at the core of the invasional meltdown hypothesis. The interaction of non-native species could result in an exacerbation of each other’s effects. Thus, the resulting effect of multiple non-native species on ecosystems can be greater than the sum of their individual effects. We designe...

Invasions are a threat to biodiversity because non-native species are generally more competitive than native species. Hydrilla verticillata is an invasive macrophyte that causes concern in many regions. We used field surveys and an experiment to test the hypothesis that H. verticillata colonization is negatively affected by a native competitor and...

Owning to dissimilarity with native macrophytes, invasive macrophytes may negatively affect the diet and foraging efficiency of fishes. We evaluated the invertebrate availability, diet composition, and foraging efficiency of four fish species that use macrophytes as habitat in a native and a highly invasive macrophyte. The samples were taken in a r...

Aim We tested the hypothesis that the diversity and abundance of aquatic macrophytes are negatively related with Eichhornia crassipes abundance in its introduced range, but not in its native range. Location Upper Paraná River Floodplain, Brazil and Southeast China. Methods We sampled aquatic macrophytes patches in Brazil (native range) and China...

Urochloa is the most diverse genus of the Melinidinae, Paniceae tribe, Panicoideae subfamily. Different species of Urochloa were introduced into Brazil, where they occur in a variety of habitats, including rivers and reservoirs such as, for example, the Itaipu Hydroelectric reservoir. The effects of Urochloa arrecta on native diversity have previou...

Invasive populations of macrophytes are widely distributed and have been successfully introduced and established in freshwater habitats. Hydrilla verticillata was first recorded in 2005 in the Upper Paraná River floodplain and in 2007 at the Itaipu Reservoir (Brazil-Paraguay border, ca. 300 km downstream from its first record). However, its genetic...

Invasive macrophytes usually increase the homogenisation of habitats and can affect local communities with negative effects on the food chain. We evaluated experimentally the composition, density, richness and diversity of the invertebrates in the invasive macrophyte Hydrilla verticillata and assessed the potential effects of this macrophyte on the...

Plants that colonize wet habitats may become temporarily submerged forming a new habitat for fish in the flood period. In this study, the amphibian macrophyte Polygonum punctatum was evaluated as a temporary habitat and feeding ground for fish (≤ 108 mm) during the flood period in a river–floodplain ecosystem. The fish were sampled in January and F...

The deposition of plant detritus changes sediment features, but little is known about how the accumulation of detritus affects the colonization of invasive and native submerged macrophytes. We tested the predictions that (i) submerged macrophyte occurrences correlate positively with the presence of detritus over sediment; (ii) the colonization of s...

The success of invasive species depends on the overcoming of abiotic and biotic filters. Abiotic variables likely have greater relative importance over invasion at broad spatial scales, while biotic interactions are more important at fine spatial scales. In this study, we tested the hypotheses that (i) the abundance of the invasive Hydrilla vertici...

α-diversity often responds to habitat structural complexity as a unimodal function. In aquatic systems, increasing density of aquatic vegetation creates more habitat structural complexity for fishes, but only up to a certain threshold, beyond which fish abundance and diversity are restricted by reduced space. As a result, species turnover and neste...

Hydrilla verticillata is a submerged, rooted macrophyte native to Asia and Australia, but currently attains broad distribution across all continents. Its success as an invasive species depends on the simultaneous influence of abiotic and biotic factors on different components of its performance. We conducted a factorial experiment to test the short...

Hydrilla verticillata is a submerged macrophyte that has invaded every continent except Antarctica. In this study, we tested the predictions that (i) H. verticillata invades sites with a higher prevalence of native species; (ii) co-occurrences between the invasive and natives depend on their degree of similarity in morphology and resource use and t...

Questions Understanding the processes that determine the variation in community composition (β‐diversity) is a major challenge in ecology, evolution and conservation. Here we assess the importance of abiotic variables associated with local environmental features, hydrogeomorphology and space to explain β‐diversity patterns in macrophytes by address...

Invasive species cause ecological and economic impacts on invaded ecosystems, although the presence of native species hampers the propagation of invasive species due to biotic resistance. We tested the effects of grazing by the native snail Pomacea canaliculata over the invasive macrophyte Hydrilla verticillata and the native macrophyte Egeria naja...

Environmental heterogeneity (EH) plays a central role in hypotheses used to explain distributions of species diversity. Here, we conducted a meta-analysis of species richness–EH (S–EH) relationships reported for experimental or quasi-experimental studies. We controlled for the lack of independence among effect sizes and additionally performed a cum...

The responses of native plants to competition with invasive plants depend mainly on the density of the invasive plants and on the ability of the native plants to compete for resources. In this study, we tested the influence of the invasive exotic Urochloa arrecta (Poaceae) on the early colonization of two native species (Pontederia cordata and Leer...

Pond systems perform a myriad of ecosystem services and make unique contributions to aquatic biodiversity conservation at the landscape scale. Despite their high conservation value, in Brazil, natural ponds have been lost and degraded at alarming rates. The remaining have become exceptionally vulnerable after the enactment of the recent Native Vege...

Hydrological connectivity interferes directly in dispersal rates of organisms and in similarity of environmental conditions among floodplain environments. Consequently, connectivity promotes changes in food resources availability to fish. Here we tested the predictions that (a) isolated floodplain lakes have greater environmental heterogeneity than...

Climatic changes predict alteration in dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) in freshwater ecosystems. However, the responses of invasive submerged macrophytes to DIC are rarely assessed. We evaluated the phenotypic plasticity of the invasive macrophyte Hydrilla verticillata in response to DIC, and how the presence of a native, Egeria najas, influences...

The occurrence of non-native species at high densities may generate competition for resources and possibly exclude native species in various environments. We evaluated the effects of increased densities of the non-native invasive macrophyte Hydrilla verticillata on the growth of the native species Egeria najas in different sediment types and with o...

Morphological performance of invasive plants can be determined by abiotic factors (e.g. water temperature) and biotic factors (e.g. herbivory). This study investigates the performance of an exotic plant in its native and introduced environments. The questions of study are: Is the performance of Egeria densa in both its native and introduced areas a...

Macrophyte assemblages are composed of species with different life forms and various ecological functions. Our aim was to investigate the potential environmental determinants of changes in the biomass of individual life forms and of the composition of the macrophyte assemblage in terms of life forms diversity. We sampled 23 waterbodies at low and h...