Pied tamarins change their vocal behavior in response to noise levels in the largest city in the Amazon.

Many animal species depend on sound to communicate with conspecifics. However, human-generated (anthropogenic) noise may mask acoustic signals and so disrupt behavior. Animals may use various strategies to circumvent this, including shifts in the timing of vocal activity and changes to the acoustic parameters of their calls. We tested whether pied tamarins (Saguinus bicolor) adjust their vocal behavior in response to city noise. We predicted that both the probability of occurrence and the number of long calls would increase in response to anthropogenic noise and that pied tamarins would temporally shift their vocal activity to avoid noisier periods. At a finer scale, we anticipated that the temporal parameters of tamarin calls (e.g., call duration and syllable repetition rate) would increase with noise amplitude. We collected information on the acoustic environment and the emission of long calls in nine wild pied tamarin groups in Manaus, Brazil. We found that the probability of long-call occurrence increased with higher levels of anthropogenic noise, though the number of long calls did not. The number of long calls was related to the time of day and the distance from home range borders-a proxy for the distance to neighboring groups. Neither long-call occurrence nor call rate was related to noise levels at different times of day. We found that pied tamarins decreased their syllable repetition rate in response to anthropogenic noise. Long calls are important for group cohesion and intergroup communication. Thus, it is possible that the tamarins emit one long call with lower syllable repetition, which might facilitate signal reception. The occurrence and quantity of pied tamarin' long calls, as well as their acoustic proprieties, seem to be governed by anthropogenic noise, time of the day, and social mechanisms such as proximity to neighboring groups.

Resource adaptation drives the size-complexity rule in termites.

The size-complexity rule posits that the evolution of larger cooperative groups should favour more division of labour. Examples include more cell types in larger multicellular organisms, and more polymorphic castes in larger eusocial colonies. However, a correlation between division of labour and group size may reflect a shared response of both traits to resource availability and/or profitability. Here, this possibility was addressed by investigating the evolution of sterile caste number (worker and soldier morphotypes) in termites, a major clade of eusocial insects in which the drivers of caste polymorphism are poorly understood. A novel dataset on 90 termite species was compiled from the published literature. The analysis showed that sterile caste number did increase markedly with colony size. However, after controlling for resource adaptations and phylogeny, there was no evidence for this relationship. Rather, sterile caste number increased with increasing nest-food separation and decreased with soil-feeding, through changes in worker (but not soldier) morphotype number. Further, colony size increased with nest-food separation, thus driving the false correlation between sterile caste number and colony size. These findings support adaptation to higher energy acquisition as key to the rise of complex insect societies, with larger size being a by-product.

Gold miners augment malaria transmission in indigenous territories of Roraima state, Brazil.

BACKGROUND: Endemic malaria is present in all 15 municipalities of Roraima state, Brazilian Amazonia. Knowledge of epidemiological data of specific populations can guide health policies to formulate effective strategies for integrated control of health-disease care. This study aims to ascertain when, where and who fell ill with malaria in Roraima state from 2010 to 2020. METHODS: This descriptive study was based on statistical secondary surveillance data through the analysis of relationships underlying numbers of cases, hospitalizations and deaths using the Malaria Epidemiological Surveillance Information System, Mortality Information System and Hospitalization Information System. RESULTS: From 2010 to 2020, there were 138,504 autochthonous cases, 26,158 Venezuelan imported cases, 3765 hospitalizations, and 77 deaths from malaria reported in Roraima. Annual parasitic incidence and the number of hospitalizations showed impressive changes over the period, but without significantly correlating with number of deaths. The proportion of Plasmodium falciparum infections had significant shifts throughout this study. Malaria prevalence in indigenous and mining areas has been increasing since 2014. CONCLUSION: The presence of miners in indigenous areas is a reality that has been contributing to the increase of malaria cases in Roraima. The need to implement health policies that also meet this contingent is reinforced.

Hunger for sex: Abundant, heterogeneous resources select for sexual reproduction in the field.

Major hypotheses on sex evolution predict that resource abundance and heterogeneity should either select for or against sexual reproduction. However, seldom have these predictions been explicitly tested in the field. Here, we investigated this question using soil oribatid mites, a diverse and abundant group of soil arthropods whose local communities can be dominated by either sexual or asexual species. First, we refined theoretical predictions by addressing how the effects of resource abundance, heterogeneity and abiotic conditions could modify each other. Then, we estimated the strength of selection for sexual species in local communities while controlling for phylogeny and neutral processes (ecological drift and dispersal), and tested its relation to resource and abiotic gradients. We show that sexual species tended to be favoured with increasing litter amount, a measure of basal resource abundance. Further, there was some evidence that this response occurred mainly under higher tree species richness, a measure of basal resource heterogeneity. This response to resources is unlikely to reflect niche partitioning between reproductive modes, as sexual and asexual species overlapped in trophic niche according to a comparative analysis using literature data on stable isotope ratios. Rather, these findings are consistent with the hypothesis that sex facilitates adaptation by breaking unfavourable genetic associations, an advantage that should increase with effective population size when many loci are under selection and, thus, with resource abundance.

Direct and indirect effects of geographic and environmental factors on ant beta diversity across Amazon basin.

Understanding the direct and indirect effects of niche and neutral processes in structuring species diversity is particularly challenging because environmental factors are often geographically structured. Here, we used Structural Equation Modeling to quantify direct and indirect effects of geographic distance, the Amazon River's opposite margins, and environmental differences in temperature, precipitation, and vegetation density (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index-NDVI) on ant beta diversity (Jaccard's dissimilarity) across Amazon basin. We used a comprehensive survey of ground-dwelling ant species from 126 plots distributed across eight sampling sites along a broad environmental gradient. We found that geographic distance and NDVI differences were the major direct predictors of ant composition dissimilarity. The major indirect effect was that of temperature through NDVI, whereas precipitation neither had direct or indirect detectable effects on beta diversity. Thus, ant compositional dissimilarity seems to be mainly driven by a combination of isolation by distance (through dispersal limitation) and selection imposed by vegetation density, and indirectly, by temperature. Our results suggest that neutral and niche processes have been similarly crucial in driving the current beta diversity patterns of Amazonian ground-dwelling ants.

Modelling selection, drift, dispersal and their interactions in the community assembly of Amazonian soil mites.

Three processes can explain contemporary community assembly: natural selection, ecological drift and dispersal. However, quantifying their effects has been complicated by confusion between different processes and neglect of expected interactions among them. One possible solution is to simultaneously model the expected effects of each process within species, across communities and across species, thus providing more integrative tests of ecological theory. Here, we used generalized linear mixed models to assess the effects of selection, drift and dispersal on the occurrence probability of 135 soil oribatid mite species across 55 sites over an Amazonian rainforest landscape (64 km2). We tested for interactions between process-related factors and partitioned the explained variation among them. We found that occurrence probability (1) responded to soil P content and litter mass depending on body size and reproductive mode (sexual or parthenogenetic), respectively (selection); (2) increased with community size (drift); and (3) decreased with distance to the nearest source population, and more so in rare species (dispersal limitation). Processes did not interact significantly, and our best model explained 67% of the overall variation in species occurrence probability. However, most of the variation was attributable to dispersal limitation (55%). Our results challenge the seldom-tested theoretical prediction that ecological processes should interact. Rather, they suggest that dispersal limitation overrides the signatures of drift and selection at the landscape level, thus rendering soil microarthropod species ecologically equivalent and possibly contributing to the maintenance of metacommunity diversity.

Can shifts in metabolic scaling predict coevolution between diet quality and body size?

Larger species tend to feed on abundant resources, which nonetheless have lower quality or degradability, the so-called Jarman-Bell principle. The "eat more" hypothesis posits that larger animals compensate for lower quality diets through higher consumption rates. If so, evolutionary shifts in metabolic scaling should affect the scope for this compensation, but whether this has happened is unknown. Here, we investigated this issue using termites, major tropical detritivores that feed along a humification gradient ranging from dead plant tissue to mineral soil. Metabolic scaling is shallower in termites with pounding mandibles adapted to soil-like substrates than in termites with grinding mandibles adapted to fibrous plant tissue. Accordingly, we predicted that only larger species of the former group should have more humified, lower quality diets, given their higher scope to compensate for such a diet. Using literature data on 65 termite species, we show that diet humification does increase with body size in termites with pounding mandibles, but is weakly related to size in termites with grinding mandibles. Our findings suggest that evolution of metabolic scaling may shape the strength of the Jarman-Bell principle.

Air transportation, population density and temperature predict the spread of COVID-19 in Brazil.

There is evidence that COVID-19, the disease caused by the betacoronavirus SARS-CoV-2, is sensitive to environmental conditions. However, such conditions often correlate with demographic and socioeconomic factors at larger spatial extents, which could confound this inference. We evaluated the effect of meteorological conditions (temperature, solar radiation, air humidity and precipitation) on 292 daily records of cumulative number of confirmed COVID-19 cases across the 27 Brazilian capital cities during the 1st month of the outbreak, while controlling for an indicator of the number of tests, the number of arriving flights, population density, proportion of elderly people and average income. Apart from increasing with time, the number of confirmed cases was mainly related to the number of arriving flights and population density, increasing with both factors. However, after accounting for these effects, the disease was shown to be temperature sensitive: there were more cases in colder cities and days, and cases accumulated faster at lower temperatures. Our best estimate indicates that a 1 °C increase in temperature has been associated with a decrease in confirmed cases of 8%. The quality of the data and unknowns limit the analysis, but the study reveals an urgent need to understand more about the environmental sensitivity of the disease to predict demands on health services in different regions and seasons.

Impact of environmental temperatures on mortality, sex and caste ratios in Melipona interrupta Latreille (Hymenoptera, Apidae).

Temperature is a major driver of biological phenomena, from metabolism to ecological interactions and rates of evolutionary diversification. However, species vary greatly in their thermal tolerance, as well as the temperature under which they perform best. This study aimed to investigate the effect of experimental manipulation of environmental temperatures on the individual mortality and phenotypic composition of colonies of Melipona interrupta. To fulfill these objectives, 30 colonies in equivalent developmental conditions were artificially subjected to different temperatures. Temperatures were monitored by thermo-hygrometers, and immature mortality and sex and caste ratios were observed in brood combs during 14 months. A strong effect of external temperature on immatures was detected on deviations from 28 to 30 °C (the natural average temperature inside the colony), causing an increase in mortality. Likewise, a significant effect of temperature on sex ratio was detected, with male:female ratio decreasing at temperatures below and above 28-30 °C. Lastly, there was no clear evidence for an effect of temperature on caste ratio, although queens appeared to become relatively more frequent at warmer temperatures. The results of this study allow us to conclude that anthropogenic changes, whose effect can be extrapolated to the similar natural changes, that modify the environmental temperatures to which M. interrupta colonies are exposed are likely to compromise their survival, mainly through individual mortality.

A tropical arthropod unravels local and global environmental dependence of seasonal temperature-size response.

In most ectotherms, adult body size decreases with warming, the so-called 'temperature-size rule' (TSR). However, the extent to which the strength of the TSR varies naturally within species is little known, and the significance of this phenomenon for tropical biota has been largely neglected. Here, we show that the adult body mass of the soil mite Rostrozetes ovulum declined as maximum temperature increased over seasons in a central Amazonian rainforest. Further, per cent decline per °C was fourfold higher in riparian than in upland forests, possibly reflecting differences in oxygen and/or resource supply. Adding our results to a global dataset revealed that, across terrestrial arthropods, the seasonal TSR is generally stronger in hotter environments. Our study suggests that size thermal dependence varies predictably with the environment both locally and globally.

A Regulação dos Aterros Sanitários a Partir da Avaliação de Indicadores de Desempenho

A disposição final dos resíduos sólidos em aterros sanitários deve observar aspectos técnicos, operacionais e também os relativos às questões jurídicas e administrativas, tanto do operador, normalmente privado, como do órgão público contratante. Visando o equilíbrio dos interesses, mas também por força da legislação brasileira, surge a regulação como mecanismo institucional para garantir a qualidade dos serviços, a partir de indicadores cujas metodologias para seu desempenho devem constar de um Plano de Operação, a ser elaborado pelo operador e aceito consensualmente pelo poder concedente e pelo regulador. Desta forma, o Estado do Rio de Janeiro, no âmbito da Política Estadual de Resíduos Sólidos, vem desenvolvendo, através da entidade reguladora estadual, instrumentos normativos que possam garantir a universalização e sustentabilidade desses serviços considerados essenciais.

Combining Taxonomic and Functional Approaches to Unravel the Spatial Distribution of an Amazonian Butterfly Community.

This study investigated the spatial distribution of an Amazonian fruit-feeding butterfly assemblage by linking species taxonomic and functional approaches. We hypothesized that: 1) vegetation richness (i.e., resources) and abundance of insectivorous birds (i.e., predators) should drive changes in butterfly taxonomic composition, 2) larval diet breadth should decrease with increase of plant species richness, 3) small-sized adults should be favored by higher abundance of birds, and 4) communities with eyespot markings should be able to exploit areas with higher predation pressure. Fruit-feeding butterflies were sampled with bait traps and insect nets across 25 km(2) of an Amazonian ombrophilous forest in Brazil. We measured larval diet breadth, adult body size, and wing marking of all butterflies. Our results showed that plant species richness explained most of the variation in butterfly taxonomic turnover. Also, community average diet breadth decreased with increase of plant species richness, which supports our expectations. In contrast, community average body size increased with the abundance of birds, refuting our hypothesis. We detected no influence of environmental gradients on the occurrence of species with eyespot markings. The association between butterfly taxonomic and functional composition points to a mediator role of the functional traits in the environmental filtering of butterflies. The incorporation of the functional approach into the analyses allowed for the detection of relationships that were not observed using a strictly taxonomic perspective and provided an extra insight into comprehending the potential adaptive strategies of butterflies.

What drives the dynamics of a soil mite population under seasonal flooding? A null model analysis.

Floods can inflict high mortality on terrestrial organisms, but may also promote adaptive evolution. In seasonal floodplains, several taxa show flood-related traits that may be important for their long-term persistence, but the available evidence is conflicting. Here, we used a simulation approach to investigate the interplay between seasonal floods and submersion resistance in driving the population dynamics of the parthenogenetic soil mite Rostrozetes ovulum in an Amazonian blackwater floodplain. First, we gathered data from two flood cycles to estimate field survival rate. Next, we used further data from a submersion survival laboratory experiment and a historical flood record to build a null model for R. ovulum's survival rate under seasonal flooding, and then tested it against field survival estimates. Floods caused marked density declines, but the two estimates of field survival rate were statistically equivalent, suggesting relatively constant survival across years. Submersion survival time varied tenfold among individuals, but its variability was within the range known for life history traits of other asexual invertebrates. Both field survival rates were consistent with the null model, supporting seasonal flooding as the main mortality factor. Surprisingly, though, average flood duration was actually larger than the average mite could survive, suggesting that population persistence relies on relatively rare, super-resistant phenotypes. Overall, the studied R. ovulum population appears to have a mainly density-independent dynamics across years, with its viability depending on mechanisms that buffer flood survival rate against temporal oscillations.

Coleta seletiva de lixo: uma alternativa para minimização de resíduos com geração de renda / It collects seletive of garbage an alternative for minimization of residues with generation of yield

O lixo produzido pelas atividades urbanas representa um dos mais graves problemas ambientais da atualidade. Como agravante, observa-se um crescimento generalizado nas quantidades geradas. Devido aos altos custos para o seu recolhimento e transporte, e à escassez de áreas para sua correta destinação, é fundamental a pesquisa visando a implementação de soluções que resultam na redução dessas quantidades. Analisando-se a composição média desses resíduos, observa-se a presença de diversos materiais com relativo valor econômico. A partir da segregação na origem, através de algum sistema de coleta seletiva de lixo, torna-se possível agregar valor a esses materiais, promovendo a geração de renda aos participantes dos sistemas, como também, e principalmente, minimizando as quantidades de lixo dispostas no meio ambiente. O objetivo desta pesquisa consiste em apresentar aspectos característicos dos sistemas de coleta seletiva de lixo que contribuem efetivamente para redução de resíduos no meio ambiente. O enfoque é a experiência desenvolvida no Município de Angra dos Reis, no período de 1993 a 2000, quando foram registradas quantidades expressivas de lixo reciclável, coletadas e retornadas, como matéria prima, às indústrias. A concepção adotada para o sistema de coleta seletiva de lixo em Angra dos Reis se baseou, intensivamente, na remuneração do lixo reciclável fornecido pela população ao sistema, através de um programa de troca por alimentos, material escolar e cimento. Conhecendo-se o valor de mercado dos componentes do lixo (alumínio, metais em geral, vidros, papéis e plásticos), estabeleceu-se uma tabela de valores para troca. A Prefeitura Municipal, no sentido de viabilizar a participação da população, implantou uma estrutura para recolhimento, recebimento, beneficiamento e comercialização desse material, composta por galpões; veículos; embarcações; usina de beneficiamento; funcionários operacionais; e estrutura administrativa. A partir dos dados coletados, tanto em visitas a diversas experiências, como em pesquisa bibliográfica, foi possível concluir que, apesar dos custos financeiros para implantação e manutenção dos sistemas, os resultados em relação à diminuição dos impactos no meio ambiente e à melhoria na geração de renda da população participante são considerados altamente positivos.