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Bird population responses to landscape change at the BBDFFP, Amazonas, Brazil
Bird population responses to landscape change at the BBDFFP, Amazonas, Brazil

In this research line, we analyze mist-net captures and bioacoustics monitoring of more than 100 understory forest bird species sampled in old-growth and secondary-forest sites of the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project (BDFFP). Our analyses aimed at inferring demographic and local distribution responses to anthropogenic habitat change in a deforestation frontier. The Auk paper about age effects on survival by Alejandra Muñoz is one highlight of this work. Other papers in preparation analyze change in population density and differences in occupancy dynamics parameters between forest types. Data collection was supported by STRI and FAPEAM research grants.

Photo by Rob Bierregaard, Jr. showing Dimona 10 and 1ha fragments short after isolation, in 1984.

Distribution, habitat use, and population dynamics of threatened species
Distribution, habitat use, and population dynamics of threatened species

Starting with Luiza Figueira’s MSc paper on secondary forest use by parrots in the BDFFP, we opened a line of work aimed at understanding populations of threatened species, one or a few at a time. More or less accidentally, it happened that most of this work has centered on parrots, with Viviane Zulian’s PhD focusing on the Vinaceous-breasted Parrot (Amazona vinacea), and now, Diego Zavala’s MSc studying tree cavity use by the Great Green Macaw (Ara ambiguus), in Costa Rica. Vivi’s redrawing of the Vinaceous-breasted geographic range and the data integration models she developed for that purpose are probably the most consequential ecological application coming out of our lab to date.

Photo of a Vinaceous-breasted Parrot (Amazona vinacea) in western Santa Catarina, Brazil, by Viviane Zulian.

Population biology of infectious diseases and their vectors
Population biology of infectious diseases and their vectors

Since the investigation about palm three infestation by Rhodnius bugs, in collaboration with Fernando Abad-Franch, we have explored applications of hierarchical modeling to the study of disease vectors and, most recently, in Ricardo Rohweder’s MSc project, to analyzing the transmission of a viral disease in Rio Grande do Sul. This line of research produced collaborations with the Porto Alegre city council and with the government of the state of Rio Grande do Sul. These projects, which mostly analyze information collected by large-scale public health initiatives, have produced results about geographic distribution of disease vectors and about the effectiveness and timing of control measures.

Photo of a stage 2 Aedes aegypti larva, by Ricardo Rohweder. 

some Projects completed before 2020

Can fish live on land? Impressed by the land cruising abilities of beasts like the killifish, which routinely jumps out of water to colonize temporary ponds in upland Amazon forest, Thiago B. A. Couto became interested in finding out whether stream fish and temporary pond fish follow different longitudinal distribution patterns. It turns out that no, they don’t and the longitudinal gradient pattern of downstream increasing diversity still reigns supreme. Thiago collected the data with the help of Jansen Zuanon’s Igarapés project and modeled distribution with a multi-species site-occupancy approach. The conclusions were published in 2018, in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Science 75 (2): 319-328. Support: CNPq, FAPEAM, STRI.

Nocturnal birds in the second growth: Mônica Sberze sampled owls, potoos and nightjars in a set of 54 continuous forest and second growth sites. With her data, she tested expectations about which species occur most frequently in the secondary forest - a type of landscape cover that is growing and often neglected in ecological studies of tropical rainforest. As in the commonness/rarity study, we used detection-non-detection data to estimate occupancy while taking detection failures into account. This study relied completely on the detection of vocalizations, motivating work on autonomous recording. A final report can be found in Mônica’s M.A. thesis and in Animal Conservation 13 (1): 3-11. Support: IEB-Beca, FAPEAM, STRI.

Kissing-bugs on palm trees: The control of chagas-disease carrying triatomine bugs (aka kissing bugs) is a serious health concern in Latin America. This study applied a site-occupancy approach to model infestation of palm trees by triatomine bugs over three spatial scales and arrived at the conclusion that cleaning palm trees near homes makes a very substantial difference in infestation. The work was based on a data set collected by F. Abad-Franch, from Brazil’s Fiocruz, and colleagues. It was published in2010 in the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases 4 (3): e620. Support: Fiocruz, STRI.

Commonness and rarity of birds in the continuous forest: Encouraged by the results from old mist-net records and recognizing the potential for improved sampling design, we set out to address simple questions that could be easily treated with point count data. This particular project tests currently held notions of rarity and commonness in a set oftwenty continuous species. Do these notions reflect differences in occupancy or are they mostly a result of differences in detectability? This work resulted from Marconi Cerqueira’s MSc project and was published in 2013 as Cerqueira et al. Diversity and Distributions 19 (7): 710-721. Support: FAPEAM, STRI.

Sex-biased incidence of Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in two human populations of the central Amazon basin: More men than women contract Cutaneous Leishmaniasis, a difference usually attributed to higher male exposure to disease vectors. We compared Leishmaniasis incidence in a rural population, where men spend relatively more time in the woods, with incidence in a population of field researchers, where men and women are equally exposed to vectors. The sex-bias persists among researchers, suggesting it cannot be fully explained by exposure differences. Study led by Letícia Soares in collaboration with F. Abad-Franch, published in 2014 as Soares et al. Tropical Medicine & International Health 19 (8): 988-995.   Support: CAPES, Fiocruz, FAPEAM, STRI.