A defaunação interfere negativamente no comportamento e funções ecológicas de mamíferos e aves terrestres na Amazônia
Date
2023-10-24Author
http://lattes.cnpq.br/8264757956196180
BATISTA, Gabriela da Silva
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Defaunation leads to the alteration of ecological functions essential for natural
ecosystems, such as predation, seed dispersal, and nutrient cycling. In recent decades,
exclusion experiments have become a useful approach to investigate the impacts of
wildlife loss on seedlings species diversity, but are seldom used to assess the impact of
defaunation on ecological functions. In this context, we aimed to evaluate how ecological
functions in a neotropical forest may be altered due to changes in the occurrence and
frequency of behaviors exhibited by terrestrial vertebrates in areas simulating different
levels of experimental defaunation: non-defaunated (control), intermediate (partial
exclosure), and severe (total exclosure). Additionally, we questioned whether behaviors
change more seasonally in non-defaunated areas than in defaunated experimental
treatments. We recorded and quantified vertebrate behaviors within different treatments
using camera traps, grouping species into functional groups. Behaviors were
categorized as feeding, excretion or defecation, bioturbation, and trampling and
weighted by species body size. We revealed that the weighted frequency of all
behaviors was drastically reduced (> 95% reduction for trampling, feeding and
bioturbation, and defecation) under severe defaunation conditions. During the dry
season, there was an increase in the number of behavior records, mainly defecation or
scent marking, with an emphasis on large rodents and small mammals in defaunated
treatments. In the rainy season, bird records stood out, particularly in bioturbation and
feeding behaviors. The removal of medium and large terrestrial mammals and birds led
to a significant loss of behaviors, potentially reducing the services provided by tropical
forests as a whole.