PhD Project

Understanding which biotic and abiotic elements influence the occurrence of species at different spatiotemporal scales is one of the main objectives of modern community ecology. The structure of a community can suffer temporal and spatial fluctuations, and this dynamic is mainly influenced by interspecific interactions, environmental variations and the ecological characteristics of the species. The effect of the species on the functioning of ecosystems depends largely on their functional traits. The functional diversity of a community takes into account a set of ecologically significant traits and can be correlated with characteristics of landscape and habitat quality, to understand the patterns of variation in the functional differences of the communities. These functional traits also influence mammals' responses to environmental changes arising from anthropic pressures. This study seeks to evaluate changes in the functional composition of medium to large-sized mammal communities in environmental gradients in the Atlantic Forest, associating parameters of landscape and habitat quality to the activity patterns and occurrence of these species. The results of this research will make it possible to identify environmental and biotic filters that influence the communities' composition and the functional traits of the species present in the Atlantic Forest fragments. Thus, we will analyze published data on the richness of medium and large size mammals in the Atlantic Forest of southeastern Brazil. In addition, landscape data of the studied fragments will be obtained through manual decomposition of satellite images. Functional diversity and activity patterns of different species will be associated with landscape variables and defaunation rates. We aim to understand which elements influence the occurrence patterns of mammal species and their functional diversity in the Atlantic Forest, contributing to preserve and restore the quality of the fragments and its surroundings, helping the conservation of species and the preservation of ecosystem services in these areas.