Christine Strussmann

Building bridges between environmental and political agendas is essential nowadays in face of the increasing human pressure on natural environments, including wetlands. Wetlands provide critical ecosystem services for humanity and can generate a considerable direct or indirect income to the local communities. To meet many of the sustainable development goals, we need to move our trajectory from the current environmental destructive development to a wiser wetland use. The current article contain a proposed agenda for the Pantanal aiming the improvement of public policy for conservation in the Pantanal, one of the largest, most diverse, and continuous inland wetland in the world. We suggest and discuss a list of 11 essential interfaces between science, policy, and development in region linked to the proposed agenda. We believe that a functional science network can booster the collaborative capability to generate creative ideas and solutions to address the big challenges faced by the P...

Scinax (Anura: Hylidae) is a species-rich genus of amphibians (113 spp.), divided into five species groups by morphological features. Cladistic analyses however revealed only two monophyletic clades in these groups: Scinax catharinae and Scinax ruber. Most species from the S. catharinae clade are found in Atlantic rainforest, except for Scinax canastrensis,S. centralis, S. luizotavioi, S. machadoi,S. pombali and S. skaios. In the present work, specimens of Scinax collected in Chapada dos Guimarães, central Brazil, were morphologically compatible with species from theS. catharinae group. On the other hand, genetic analysis based on mitochondrial (16S and 12S) and nuclear (rhodopsin) sequences revealed a nucleotide divergence of 6 to 20% between Scinax sp. and other congeners from the Brazilian savannah (Cerrado). Accordingly, Bayesian inference placed Scinax sp. in the S. catharinae clade with high support values. Hence, these findings strongly indicate the presence of a new species ...

In the last decades, fi eld inventories and ecological studies on amphibians and reptiles were intensifi ed in the Upper Paraguay River Basin. Although a complete updated species list has not been published yet, these studies, together with the increment and organization of regional zoo-logical collections, allow a general evaluation of the taxonomic composition and ecological traits of the local herpetofauna. Both for amphibians and reptiles, areas in the fl oodplain present lower richness and higher abundances when compared to localities in the surrounding highlands. Ter-restrial species predominate in spite of the wide extension of aquatic habitats. New taxonomic records are expected due to the ongoing colonization process from neighboring ecosystems, climatic and hydrological changes, and ongoing research in distinct parts of the Pantanal. None of the species occurring in the whole basin is included in offi cial lists of endangered species. There are quite good ecological and/or...

Anthropogenic factors have significantly influenced the frequency, duration, and intensity of meteorological drought in many regions of the globe, and the increased frequency of wildfires is among the most visible consequences of human-induced climate change. Despite its role in determining biodiversity outcomes in different ecosystems, wildfires can cause negative impacts on wildlife. We conducted ground surveys along line transects to estimate the first-order impact of the 2020 wildfires on vertebrates in the Pantanal wetland, Brazil. We adopted the distance sampling technique to estimate the densities and the number of dead vertebrates in the 39,030 square kilometers affected by fire. Our estimates indicate that at least 16.952 million vertebrates were killed immediately by the fires in the Pantanal, demonstrating the impact of such an event in wet savanna ecosystems. The Pantanal case also reminds us that the cumulative impact of widespread burning would be catastrophic, as fire...

Phylogenetic studies have uncovered biogeographic patterns and the associated diversification processes of Neotropical wet forest taxa, yet the extensive open and drier biomes have received much less attention. In the Stenocercus lizard radiation, restricted sampling and phylogenetic information have limited inferences about the timing, spatial context, and environmental drivers of diversification in the open and dry lowland settings of eastern and southern South America. Based on new DNA sequence data of previously unsampled species, we provide an updated historical biogeographic hypothesis of Stenocercus. We infer phylogenetic relationships, estimate divergence times, and track ancestral distributions, asking whether cladogenetic events within the genus correlate to reported shifts in South American landscapes during the past 30millionyears, focusing in the open and drier areas. To examine correlations between genetic and ecological divergence, we extracted environmental data from occurrence records and estimated climatic envelopes occupied by lowland taxa. Our results suggest that Stenocercus began to diversify around the South American Midwest by the late Oligocene. We recovered two main lowland and two main Andean clades within the genus; within both Andean clades, most cladogenetic events date back to the Miocene, synchronously with the most intense phase of Andean uplift. In the western clade of lowland Stenocercus, species ranges and divergence times are consistent with major landscape shifts at the upper Guaporé and Paraguay River basins as a result of Andean orogeny, suggesting vicariant speciation. By contrast, in the 'horned' lowland clade, we find evidence that dispersal and ecological differentiation have shaped species divergences and current ranges in the Brazilian Cerrado, Caatinga, Pampas and Atlantic Forest, possibly under a vanishing refuge scenario. Lastly, our phylogenetic results indicate two divergent clades within the formerly recognized taxon S. sinesaccus, and further evaluation of morphological data corroborates the existence of a distinct, new species of Stenocercus, here described. The new taxon occurs in the Chapada dos Parecis massif in the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso and Rondônia.

We herein provide a species list of the snakes located at PCH Canoa Quebrada, a small hydroelectric power plant built on the Rio Verde, Brazil. The power plant is located on the border of the Lucas do Rio Verde and Sorriso municipalities, midsouthern Mato Grosso state. Thirty-seven species of snakes distributed in 29 genera of seven families were recorded between 17 February and 15 November 2006, after faunal rescue activities carried out during deforestation and filling of the reservoir.

Ameerega braccata is an aposematic, small dendrobatid anuran known from its type-locality, Chapada dos Guimarães, in the State of Mato Grosso, and from a few additional localities in Mato Grosso do Sul and Goiás States, Brazil. The advertisement call of A. braccata is composed of a single unpulsed note, with a frequency range from 3.5 to 4.2 KHz (N = 110), and average duration of 65.8 ms (N = 110, SD = 11.6). The territorial call is composed of five or six repeated notes, structurally similar to advertisement call notes. The courtship call is emitted in close-range interactions between male-female during the courtship event and may reach frequencies of 2.2 to 5.3 KHz (N = 10), with shorter notes (average duration 43 ms; N = 10; SD = 4.9). Call duration, note duration and call rate of the advertisement call showed high variation (>15% of coefficient of variation), and dominant frequency showed low variation (<4%). The properties with higher variation possibly respond to climati...

This study sought to analyze groundwater and rainwater contamination by pesticides in two municipalities (Lucas do Rio Verde and Campo Verde) of Mato Grosso state. The area is Brazil's mid-west situated among the major soybean, corn and cotton producers in the state and the country. The analytical methodology combined chromatographic techniques on groundwater and rainwater samples with eco-toxicological analyses of the impacts of contamination by pesticide on bio-indicator species. The results revealed the presence of different pesticide residues in the groundwater and rainwater samples collected in the two municipalities. In conjunction with this data, results of the eco-toxicological tests revealed the presence of anomalies in a bio-indicator species collected in one of the two study sites compatible with exposure to pesticides. The results presented and discussed here highlight the degradation of water resources in the region, caused by the intensive use of pesticides in agri...