We report the first records of Scinax ruberoculatus Ferrão, Fraga, Moravec, Kaefer & Lima, 2018 in the state of Amapá, Brazil. We provide an updated distribution map of this species, comment on its occurrence in French Guiana and Suriname, and provide morphometric and bioacoustic data for a population from the municipality of Porto Grande, Amapá, including the first description of the species’ territorial call. This record from Porto Grande extends the distribution of S. ruberoculatus approximately 1430 km northeast from its type locality and helps to better understand its actual distribution. 

Gallery forests are important to the maintenance of a substantial portion of the biodiversity in neotropical savanna regions, but management guidelines specific to this forest type are limited. Here, we use birds as study group to assess if: (1) functional traits can predict the abundance and occupancy of forest species within a savanna landscape, (2) habitat structures influence the taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity of forest assemblages, and (3) less diverse gallery forest assemblages are a nested subset of more diverse assemblages living near continuous forests. Then, we propose strategies on how gallery forests can be managed to maintain their species assemblages amidst the fast expansion of human activities across tropical savanna landscapes. We studied 26 sites of gallery forests in an Amazonian savanna landscape and found that: (1) habitat specificity is the only functional trait that predicts species abundance and occupancy across a landscape; (2) phylogenetic diversity is negatively correlated with understory foliage density; (3) the percentage of forests and savannas around sites is positively correlated with both phylogenetic and functional diversity; (4) increasing human activities around gallery forest negatively influences taxonomic and functional diversity; and (5) forest bird assemblages are not distributed at random across the landscape but show a nested pattern caused by selective colonization mediated by habitat filtering. Our combined findings have three implications for the design of conservation strategies for gallery forest bird assemblages. First, maintaining the connectivity between gallery forests and adjacent continuous forests is essential because gallery forest bird assemblages are derived from continuous forest species assemblages. Second, because most species use the savanna matrix to move across the landscape, effectively managing the savanna matrices where gallery forests are embedded is as important to maintaining viable populations of forest bird species as managing the gallery forest themselves. Third, in savanna landscapes planned to be used for agriculture production, protecting gallery forests alone is not enough. Instead, gallery forests should be protected with surrounding savanna buffers to avoid the detrimental effects (edge effects and isolation) of human activities on their biodiversity.

No abstract

Pristimantis gutturalis is a species of the P. conspicillatus group described from French Guiana, with distribution so far restricted to the eastern Guiana Shield. Some aspects of this species are yet understudied, including its vocal repertoire which is unknown to date. Although in its original description it was properly characterized with regard to morphology, the description of its coloration in life consisted of brief remarks based on field notes on two females only. Moreover, little morphometric data were presented in its description, with detailed measurements provided for the holotype (a female) only. Subsequent studies have only briefly addressed this species and have not presented significant new data on it. In order to improve the knowledge on P. gutturalis, based on data from the state of Amapá, northern Brazil, in the present study we describe for the first time the advertisement and territorial calls of this species, assess its morphological and chromatic variation, provide detailed morphometric data on males and one female, and briefly comment on its natural history. Additionally, we compare the advertisement call of P. gutturalis with calls of other species of the P. conspicillatus group, and make some remarks on the acoustics of this group.