ABSTRACT. Life history parameters such as diet, reproduction, and sexual dimorphism are crucial to understand ecological and evolutionary forces shaping species traits. Nevertheless, such information is scant in the literature for most Neotropical squamates. Gymnophthalmidae contains over 242 species in 46 genera and includes small-size, mostly terrestrial species, although psamophilic, semi-aquatic, and low vegetation dwellers also occur. Dryadosaura is a monospecific genus -Dryadosaura nordestina Rodrigues et al., 2005 -, occurring in Atlantic Forest areas from Rio Grande do Norte to Northern Bahia, and little is known about its ecology and natural history. We analyzed the species' diet, reproduction, and sexual dimorphism based on 170 specimens deposited in museum collections. Dryadosaura nordestina is considered generalist and active forager, based on dietary items. Arthropods, especially ants and insect larvae, dominate the diet. The reproductive period shows a peak during the rainy season (May through June), while recruitment occurs from July through November. Males are significantly larger than females, and sexes can also be distinguished based on shape variables: males have higher heads and longer bodies, while body height and width are larger in females.
The application of acoustic indices is incipient and still needs validation before it can reliably characterize soundscapes and monitor rapidly disappearing hot-spot areas as the Brazilian tropical savanna (Cerrado). Here we investigate which of six acoustic indices better correlate with the 24 h zoophony richness of insects, anurans, birds, and mammals. We sampled one minute every 30 minutes for seven days on three sites in Serra da Canastra National Park (Minas Gerais state, Brazil) and extracted the sonotype richness and six indices based on recordings with a bandwidth of up to 48 kHz. The Acoustic Diversity, Evenness, Entropy, and Normalized Difference Soundscape indices followed the temporal trends of the sonotype richness of insects and anurans. The Acoustic Complexity (ACI) and Bioacoustic (BIO) indices did not correlated with sonotype richness. ACI and BIO were influenced by sonic abundance and geophony. We emphasize the need to include insects and anurans on soundscape and acoustic ecology analyses and to avoid bias on avian fauna alone. We also suggest that future studies explore measures of sonic abundance and acoustic niche occupation of sonotypes to complement measures of zoophony richness and better understand what each faunal group is telling us about indices.
The composition of communities of fruit‐feeding butterflies in the Brazilian Atlantic forest changes in response to landscape fragmentation and can be used as an indicator of habitat quality. Landscape fragmentation, aridity, and early signs of global warming at the northernmost distribution of this biome may impose extra challenges for species persistence. We aim to clarify the drivers of fruit‐feeding butterflies' metacommunity structure in the northernmost portion of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. We propose to disentangle consequences of habitat loss from fragmentation per se by using both habitat amount and patch scale metrics. We sampled fruit‐feeding butterflies in 15 forest fragments of up to ~30 ha during 1 year. We used fragment size, shape, distance to nearest perennial stream, Euclidean distance to nearest neighbour, forest habitat amount, proximity index, and the percentage of sugarcane within a buffer to elucidate patterns of species richness, abundance, and beta diversity. A configuration metric, stream distance, was the only variable predicting metacommunity total abundance and richness: fragments farther from water had fewer species and individuals. However, forest habitat amount and sugar cane were important to rarefied richness and species replacement between fragments. Our findings suggest that streams and associated riparian zones provide source populations for the butterfly metacommunities in this landscape, which fits the mass effect model. We also emphasise that small forest patches have high conservation value for persistence of butterfly populations, because each fragment preserves a substantial portion of the total species pool.
Heliconius nattereri C. Felder & R. Felder, 1865 is an enigmatic and rarely collected species. Because of severe habitat reduction, the species is currently listed as endangered. We here report the confirmation of a northernmost population. This collection and further observations reported here add two more known localites to the distribution of the species. Two of the three confirmed locations are in protected areas. We worry that the northern population may be at great risk because it is not formally protected. We urge conservation efforts to preserve the local forests where the species is found.
1. Mobility in flying animals can be assessed by variations in morpho-ecological traits such as body, thorax and wing sizes, wing shape and the proportion between body mass and wing area. Habitat loss and fragmentation can promote phenotypic plasticity and microevolutionary divergencies in natural populations. In this context, sexual differences in physiology and behaviour can impose different selection pressure on morphological aspects related to flight.2. We evaluated the relative impact of forest patch area and habitat amount in shaping flight-related morpho-ecological traits of the tropical butterfly Hamadryas februa. We find a marked sexual dimorphism in the species, with females being larger, having larger thorax, higher wing loadings and larger wing total area than males.These trait values indicate females as the more dispersive sex. We show that habitat amount modulates body mass allocations in both sexes, leading to an increase in thorax mass with decreasing habitat amount. The effect of habitat amount was more pronounced in females, which increased total mass and wing loading while decreasing thorax allocation with decreasing habitat amount. This outcome suggests that females increase abdominal mass in response to a reduction in habitat amount. The focal forest patch increasing area was linked to increases in hindwing lengths in both females and males.3. We advocate that both landscape metrics (i.e., habitat amount and patch area) should be considered in studies evaluating landscapes' impacts on insect mobility.We discuss results in terms of the species' sexual differences in flight behaviour and the relative importance of both landscape metrics.
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