BRAZIL ROAD-KILL: a data set of wildlife terrestrial vertebrate road-kills.

Mortality from collision with vehicles is the most visible impact of road traffic on wildlife. Mortality due to roads (hereafter road-kill) can affect the dynamic of populations of many species and can, therefore, increase the risk of local decline or extinction. This is especially true in Brazil, where plans for road network upgrading and expansion overlaps biodiversity hotspot areas, which are of high importance for global conservation. Researchers, conservationists and road planners face the challenge to define a national strategy for road mitigation and wildlife conservation. The main goal of this dataset is a compilation of geo-referenced road-kill data from published and unpublished road surveys. This is the first Data Paper in the BRAZIL series (see ATLANTIC, NEOTROPICAL, and BRAZIL collections of Data Papers published in Ecology), which aims make public road-kill data for species in the Brazilian Regions. The dataset encompasses road-kill records from 45 personal communications and 26 studies published in peer-reviewed journals, theses and reports. The road-kill dataset comprises 21,512 records, 83% of which are identified to the species level (n = 450 species). The dataset includes records of 31 amphibian species, 90 reptile species, 229 bird species, and 99 mammal species. One species is classified as Endangered, eight as Vulnerable and twelve as Near Threatened. The species with the highest number of records are: Didelphis albiventris (n = 1,549), Volatinia jacarina (n = 1,238), Cerdocyon thous (n = 1,135), Helicops infrataeniatus (n = 802), and Rhinella icterica (n = 692). Most of the records came from southern Brazil. However, observations of the road-kill incidence for non-Least Concern species are more spread across the country. This dataset can be used to identify which taxa seems to be vulnerable to traffic, analyze temporal and spatial patterns of road-kill at local, regional and national scales and also used to understand the effects of road-kill on population persistence. It may also contribute to studies that aims to understand the influence of landscape and environmental influences on road-kills, improve our knowledge on road-related strategies on biodiversity conservation and be used as complementary information on large-scale and macroecological studies. No copyright or proprietary restrictions are associated with the use of this data set other than citation of this Data Paper.

Reptile road-kills in Southern Brazil: Composition, hot moments and hotspots.

Understanding road-kill patterns is the first step to assess the potential effects of road mortality on wildlife populations, as well as to define the need for mitigation and support its planning. Reptiles are one of the vertebrate groups most affected by roads through vehicle collisions, both because they are intentionally killed by drivers, and due to their biological needs, such as thermoregulation, which make them more prone to collisions. We conducted monthly road surveys (33months), searching for carcasses of freshwater turtles, lizards, and snakes on a 277-km stretch of BR-101 road in Southernmost Brazil to estimate road-kill composition and magnitude and to describe the main periods and locations of road-kills. We modeled the distribution of road-kills in space according to land cover classes and local traffic volume. Considering the detection capacity of our method and carcass persistence probability, we estimated that 15,377 reptiles are road-killed per year (55reptiles/km/year). Road-kills, especially lizards and snakes, were concentrated during summer, probably due to their higher activity in this period. Road-kill hotspots were coincident among freshwater turtles, lizards, and snakes. Road-kill distribution was negatively related to pine plantations, and positively related to rice plantations and traffic volume. A cost-benefit analysis highlighted that if mitigation measures were installed at road-kill hotspots, which correspond to 21% of the road, they could have avoided up to 45% of recorded reptile fatalities, assuming a 100% mitigation effectiveness. Given the congruent patterns found for all three taxa, the same mitigation measures could be used to minimize the impacts of collision on local herpetofauna.

Genetic differentiation and hybrid identification using microsatellite markers in closely related wild species.

Identifying the genetic basis of speciation is critical for understanding the evolutionary history of closely related wild species. Recently diverged species facilitate the study of speciation because many genetic and morphological characteristics are still shared by the organisms under study. The Petunia genus grows in South American grasslands and comprises both recently diverged wild species and commercial species. In this work, we analysed two closely related species: Petunia exserta, which has a narrow endemic range and grows exclusively in rocky shelters, and Petunia axillaris, which is widely distributed and comprises three allopatric subspecies. Petunia axillaris ssp. axillaris and P. exserta occur in sympatry, and putative hybrids between them have been identified. Here, we analysed 14 expressed sequence tag-simple sequence repeats (EST-SSRs) in 126 wild individuals and 13 putative morphological hybrids with the goals of identifying differentially encoded alleles to characterize their natural genetic diversity, establishing a genetic profile for each taxon and to verify the presence of hybridization signal. Overall, 143 alleles were identified and all taxa contained private alleles. Four major groups were identified in clustering analyses, which indicated that there are genetic distinctions among the groups. The markers evaluated here will be useful in evolutionary studies involving these species and may help categorize individuals by species, thus enabling the identification of hybrids between both their putative taxa. The individuals with intermediate morphology presented private alleles of their both putative parental species, although they showed a level of genetic mixing that was comparable with some of the individuals with typical P. exserta morphology. The EST-SSR markers scattered throughout the Petunia genome are very efficient tools for characterizing the genetic diversity in wild taxa of this genus and aid in identifying interspecific hybrids based on the presence of private alleles. These properties indicate that these markers will be helpful tools in evolutionary studies.