Mamíferos terrestres em remanescentes de Mata Atlântica da Paraíba: ilhados num mar de cana-de-açúcar?

• Ano de defesa: 2019
• Autor(a) principal: Beltrão, Mayara Guimarães
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal da Paraíba; Brasil; Ciências Biológicas; Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências Biológicas; UFPB
• Palavras-chave em Português: Gestão de paisagem; Ecologia de paisagem; Centro de Endemismo de Pernambuco; Mamíferos de médio porte; Pequenos mamíferos; Landscape management; Landscape ecology; Pernambuco Endemism Center; Mediumsized mammals; Small mammals; CNPQ::CIENCIAS BIOLOGICAS
• Link de acesso: https://repositorio.ufpb.br/jspui/handle/123456789/20384

The change in land use is one of the main problems in both landscape management and conservation biology. These modifications generally result in fragmentation and loss of habitat, which play a cascade of effects on landscapes with changes in physical and functional structures that influence the establishment and maintenance of populations and communities. The northeast portion of the Atlantic Forest (MA), known as the Pernambuco Endemism Center (CEPE), is a biodiversity hotspot in the Atlantic Forest and the second largest producer of sugarcane in the world. It is known that this matrix has negative impacts on the fauna of mammals, but little is known about its effects on CEPE. The objective of the thesis was to provide a diagnosis both at the population level and at the level of terrestrial mammal communities in the fragments and to verify the permeability of species in sugarcane and its effect on landscape connectivity. Specifically, we estimate richness and abundance, check population parameters, test landscape variables, and species-specific as determinants of richness. Finally, we mapped the priority fragments for conservation. We recorded a richness of 16 species for small mammals and the same richness for medium-sized mammals, with Didelphis albiventris and Dasyprocta iackii being the most representative species for small and medium, respectively. For small mammals, the recorded richness was equal to or greater than that found in the southeastern MA, which has a lower level of fragmentation, which leads us to two hypotheses: CEPE's richness for this group was even greater and / or that we are suffering a debt of extinction. The latter is supported by the low abundance of the species, five of them with only one record in the fragment, as well as by the trend towards population decline as demonstrated by the disruptive population parameters of Marmosa murina. For medium-sized mammals, we also observed low abundance in all fragments and the disappearance of 30-40% of the expected species of medium-sized mammals in the region, with losses of up to 75% per fragment. These results confirm the recent defaunation estimates of the Atlantic Forest, highlighting the Northeast with the highest rates in the biome. The trophic guilds covariates, abundance of domestic dogs and body weight were important predictors in the pattern of richness of species of medium-sized mammals. The sugarcane matrix was only permeable for four species of small mammals and three of medium-sized mammals, being decisive in decreasing the functional connectivity of the landscape. Functional connectivity did not have any effect on the pattern of richness and abundance of small mammals, probably because they are “isolated” in the fragments as a result of the low permeability of the matrix. In addition to the loss of species, we recorded loss of functionality, evidenced by the trophic guild covariate as one of the determinants that weighed most on the model, in addition to the complete absence of specialized guilds, such as carnivores and herbivores, in some fragments, resulting in a functionally “half empty” forest with severe biological consequences for the loss of ecosystem services provided by the absent species. In this scenario, we recommend increasing functional connectivity through stepstones, especially in the compositional units of the fragments that we mapped as priorities.