Large continuous rainforests are the main hope for sustaining the population of large-bodied vertebrates that cannot cope with fragmentation or unsustainable hunting. The Brazilian Atlantic forest is considered a biodiversity hotspot and although highly fragmented, it still contains large forest patches that may be important for the conservation of mammals that require large areas. Here, we estimated species richness, density and biomass of medium- and large-sized mammals along the largest remnant of the Atlantic rainforest, Brazil (the Serra do Mar bioregion), an estimated area of 8000 km2. We recorded 44 species based on 4090 km of diurnal line transects and camera traps, animal tracks and interviews in 11 continental regions and two large land-bridge islands. We found high levels of similarity in mammalian composition between pairs of sites in the continental forest sites (0.84-1), but much lower similarity between pairs from the continental forest sites and the two large land-bridge islands (0.29-0.74) indicating potential local extinctions or poor dispersal of continental mammals to these islands. In addition, we found that the density and biomass varied 16- and 70-fold among sites, respectively. Mammalian biomass declined by up to 98% in intensively hunted sites and was 53-fold lower than in other Neotropical non-fragmented forests. Although this large forest remnant is able to maintain a high diversity of medium- and large-bodied mammal species, their low density and biomass may affect the long-term persistence of these populations and the ecosystem services they provide

1. Tropical forests hold some of the world's most diverse communities of plants.Many populations of large-bodied herbivores are threatened in these systems, yet their ecological functions and contribution towards the maintenance of high levels of plant diversity are poorly known. The impact of these herbivores on plant communities through antagonistic seed and seedling predation has received much attention, whilst their relevance as seed dispersal agents has been largely overlooked in experimental studies.2. Here, we tested how two key and functionally distinct large generalist mammalian herbivore species (the tapir Tapirus terrestris -a solitary browser and generalist seed disperser, and the white-lipped peccary Tayassu pecari -a group-living generalist seed/seedling predator) affect spatiotemporal patterns of diversity of seedling communities in tropical forests. We conducted a long-term multi-region landscape-scale exclusion experiment across four regions of the Atlantic forest of Brazil, representing a functional gradient of defaunation where these species were either present and absent in isolation and in combination. 3.Our results indicate that mammalian herbivores have a substantial role in regulating beta diversity in space and time. Seedling recruitment was strongly limited by the presence of the seed/seedling predator species (the peccary), but the presence of the browser and seed disperser (the tapir) had null net effects. Alpha diversity of seedlings at the community level did not respond to large herbivore exclusion at any region, whereas beta diversity decreased only where both herbivores were simultaneously excluded. Surprisingly, the synergic positive effect of both herbivore types on beta diversity was linked to increased evenness amongst dominant plant species, and a simultaneous decrease in alpha diversity of rare species.4. Synthesis. Together, these results challenge the common perception that large tropical forest herbivores maintain tropical forest diversity through antagonistic interactions, suggesting instead a synergistic effect of antagonistic predation and mutualistic seed dispersal on regional compositional diversity and local community 280 | Journal of Ecology VILLAR et AL.

We studied bat assemblages in seven sampling sites in the rural zone of São Carlos, southeastern Brazil. The sampling sites were two riparian forests, two types of Brazilian savanna (cerrado sensu stricto and cerradão), a Pinus plantation, a semideciduous forest, and an open area. We sampled bats from January 2007 to December 2011 with mist nets, totalizing 100 capture nights and 38,587 m2h of capture effort. We captured 523 individual bats of 23 species belonging to three families. Sturnira lilium was the most frequently captured species and represented 40% of all captures, followed by Carollia perspicillata (17%) and Glossophaga soricina (12%). The studied heterogeneous landscape harbors a rich bat fauna compared to other studies with similar effort in well-preserved savannas.