Despite significant progress, there is still a gender gap in science all over the world, especially at senior levels. Some progressive countries are recognizing the need to address barriers to gender equality in order to retain their best scientists and innovators, and ensure research excellence and social and economic returns on the investment made by taxpayers each year on training women scientists. We investigated the gender distribution of: (i) the productivity scholarship (PS) holders of the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, CNPq, N = 13,625), (ii) the members of the Brazilian Academy of Science (Academia Brasileira de Ciências, ABC, N = 899), and (iii) the amount of funding awarded for top quality research (“Universal” Call of CNPq, N = 3,836), between the years of 2013 and 2014. Our findings show evidence for gender imbalances in all the studied indicators of Brazilian science. We found that female scientists were more often represented among PS holders at the lower levels of the research ranking system (2). By contrast, male scientists were more often found at higher levels (1A and 1B) of PS holders, indicating the top scientific achievement, both in “Engineering, Exact Sciences, Earth Sciences”, and “Life Sciences”. This imbalance was not found in Humanities and Social Sciences. Only 14% of the ABC members were women. Humanities and Applied Social Sciences had a relatively low representation of women in the Academy (3.7%) compared to Engineering, Exact and Earth Sciences: 54.9% and Life Sciences: 41.4%. Finally, female scientists obtained significantly more funding at the lower level of the research ranking system (2), whereas male scientists obtained significantly more funding at the higher levels (1A and 1B). Our results show strong evidence of a gender imbalance in Brazilian science. We hope that our findings will be used to stimulate reforms that will result in greater equality in Brazilian science, and elsewhere.

Neotropical region are known for its huge avian diversity and for the dominance of Sub-oscine or Tyranni passerines species. These species diversity are reflected in vocal communication and we will present here two examples of Brazilian Amazon forest of Tyranni species. Although the Tyranni are known for presenting a stereotyped song compared to Oscine passerines, we have found a species with a complex calls repertoire and other with a distinguished individual variation. The study area is the Ecological Park of Gunma, Santa Bárbara, Pará, Brazil, 50 km north of Belém. We performed playback experiments to define the vocalizations of Rusty-margined flycatcher Myiozetetes cayanensis, species that presents a complex repertoire of 15 different vocalizations, including a complex duet song. We also studied Lipaugus vociferans, a lekking bird, in which males perform conspicuous vocalizations in aggregations. We have analyzed songs of 19 individuals from six leks, considering the physical parameters (frequency bandwidth and temporal parameters) of the species-specific song. The results showed that it is possible to differentiate the individuals by song. These differences can represent an important function in individual recognition inside or between leks. These results show the necessity to investigate the high diversity of behavior in tropical habitats.