Environmental drivers of tropical forest snake phenology: Insights from citizen science

Jesus, L.; Guedes, Jhonny J. M.; Moura, Mario R.; Feio, Renato Neves; Costa, Henrique Caldeira

doi:10.1002/ece3.10305

“…For example, birds interact with palm species in various ways, utilizing them as food resources, nesting, roosting and perching sites (Snow 1981 Land-use planning is not only a central-government activity. Citizen scientists are often involved in data acquisition and subsequent planning (Garretson et al 2023;Jesus et al 2023), but they often do not have the experience to sample assemblages potentially consisting of hundreds of species. Involvement of local communities is facilitated if they can initially focus on species with which they are already familiar and use as resources, such as the palm species.…”

Section: )mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Initiatives that consider collaborative sampling by amateurs could be used in conjunction with traditional methods to evaluate the distribution of endangered species(Adamantopoulou et al 2023) and conservation planning(Soteropoulos et al 2021). The data provided by knowledgeable amateurs, could also reveal ecological patterns, enhancing our understanding in how biodiversity relates to environment(Devictor et al 2010;Campbell et al 2023;Garretson et al 2023;Jesus et al 2023). Furthermore, local people are often interested in sampling biodiversity in a purposeful manner, especially if the sample will contribute to scienti c knowledge and decisions about land use(Thompson et al 2023).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Palms predict the distributions of birds in southwestern Amazônia and are potential surrogates for land-use planning by local communities

Menger,

Junior,

Emilio

et al. 2023

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In the absence of high-quality biodiversity data, land-use planners and conservationists often rely on biodiversity surrogates. Many studies have proposed surrogates based on assumptions about the environmental niches of species. However, the use of such assumptions is not always useful because biological processes and ecological interactions can operate at different scales due to the non-uniform geographical distribution of environmental conditions. Furthermore, these assumptions may obscure important relationships between species and their environment. To elucidate this issue, we asked whether biotic interactions between two taxonomic groups are more important than other factors in reflecting the distribution of unsampled species. To do this, we compared the relationship between the distribution of bird species and the distribution of the five most-abundant palm species, environmental factors, and the ecoregions. Our results show that bird-assemblage composition was more strongly correlated with changes in palm-species abundance, and that palms could serve as a cost-effective and efficient biodiversity surrogate for birds. These palm species are abundant and can be easily identified and monitored by non-specialists, such as those in local communities.

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Environmental drivers of tropical forest snake phenology: Insights from citizen science

Jesus

¹

,

Guedes

²

,

Moura

³

et al. 2023

Ecology and Evolution

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Palms predict the distributions of birds in southwestern Amazonia and are potential surrogates for land-use planning by citizen scientists

Menger,

Santorelli Junior,

Emilio

et al. 2024

Biodivers Conserv

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In the absence of high-quality biodiversity data, land-use planners and conservationists often rely on biodiversity surrogates. Many studies have proposed surrogates based on assumptions about the environmental niches of species. However, the use of such assumptions is not always useful because biological processes and ecological interactions can operate at different scales due to the non-uniform geographical distribution of environmental conditions. In such cases, compositional heterogeneity across the same region can be expected but is often hidden by broad-scale environmental data. Furthermore, these assumptions may obscure important relationships between species and their environment. To elucidate this issue, we asked whether biotic interactions between two taxonomic groups are more important than other factors in reflecting the distribution of unsampled species. To do this, we compared the relationship between the distribution of bird species and the distribution of the five most-abundant palm species which are often considered indicators of bird communities. These species include Lepidocaryum tenue, Oenocarpus bataua, Oenocarpus bacaba, Mauritiella aculeata, and Attalea speciosa. Additionally, we considered environmental factors (precipitation, water-table levels, sand and clay contents) and the ecoregions along the Purus-Madeira interfluve as drivers of bird species composition. Our results show that bird-assemblage composition was strongly correlated with changes in palm-species abundance. The presence-absence data for bird-species showed that palm-species alone explained 25% and 19% of composition of all birds and only canopy birds, respectively. These palm species are abundant and can be easily identified and monitored by non-specialists, such as citizen scientists. Citizens are often involved in data acquisition but may not have the experience to sample large assemblages consisting of hundreds of species; thus, these five most-abundant palms species could serve as a cost-effective and efficient biodiversity surrogate for birds.

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Environmental drivers of tropical forest snake phenology: Insights from citizen science

Abstract: This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Cited by 5 publications

References 109 publications

Palms predict the distributions of birds in southwestern Amazônia and are potential surrogates for land-use planning by local communities

Palms predict the distributions of birds in southwestern Amazônia and are potential surrogates for land-use planning by local communities

Environmental drivers of tropical forest snake phenology: Insights from citizen science

Palms predict the distributions of birds in southwestern Amazonia and are potential surrogates for land-use planning by citizen scientists

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