Fishermen's local knowledge of fishing resources may be an important source of information to improve artisanal tropical fisheries management, such as those found in Brazil, where most data on fish biology is lacking. We aim to study the local ecological knowledge that Brazilian coastal fishers have about reproductive aspects (season, places and migration) of 13 coastal fish species of commercial importance. We selected fishermen with more than 30 years of fishing practice and we interviewed a total of 67 fishermen: 29 from the southeastern coast, from the communities of Puruba, Almada, Picinguaba and Bertioga, and 38 from the northeastern coast, from the communities of Valença, Arembepe and Porto Sauípe. In the interviews, we used standardized questionnaires and showed photos of fish species. Our results indicate some general patterns in fishes' reproduction according to fishermen knowledge: fish species spawn in open ocean, near reefs or in coastal rivers (estuaries); some fishes reproduce during the summer and others in winter, while some have more defined spawning months. The main fish migratory patterns mentioned by interviewees were: long migrations along the coast, usually in the South to North direction, short migrations among reefs, fishes that do not migrate, migrations between the shore and open ocean and migrations between the sea and coastal rivers. Fishermen's knowledge differed among fish species: most fishermen did not know spawning places or seasons of large pelagic fishes, which raised concerns of their possible depletion. We compared such ethnoichthyological information with available scientific data, indicating promising insights about reproduction and migration of Brazilian coastal fishes. Data gathered from local fishermen may provide inexpensive and prompt information, potentially applicable to fisheries management. Our approach might be useful to several other small-scale fisheries, especially the tropical ones, where there is a high diversity of target species and a low biological and ecological knowledge about these species.
Analysis of Brazilian fishers' classifications of 24 marine (Atlantic coast) and 24 freshwater (Amazon) fish species reveals that fishers from the Atlantic coast identify fish mainly through generic names (primary lexemes), while riverine Amazonian fishers typically identify them through binomials. The similarity of Amazonian fish species seems to contribute to the detailed folk taxonomy used by riverine fishers. Highranking groups called "relatives" or "cousins" are sorted by fishers in terms of similarities of habitat, diet, and morphology and, secondarily, behavior. The general correspondence between the folk and scientific taxonomies reinforces the reality of both the supracategories used by these fishers and the biological groups as discontinuities in nature. Given the urgency of biological inventories and the lack of knowledge of high-biodiversity environments such as the Atlantic Forest and the Amazon, these results suggest that fisher knowledge and experience could contribute to scientific research. The reality of species has been the subject of debate since the early days of evolutionary biology. Darwin defined species as varieties that are well demarcated and defined and actually exist at a certain point in time, but his analysis left open the possibility that species might be arbitrary constructions of the human mind (Darwin 1859a [1982], 1859b; Coyne and Orr 2004). The term "species" is vague because it includes both
<p>Leaf construction can be costly to plants with a short leaf lifespan (LLS), with a necessity to pay back the investment in leaf deployment. Costs of leaf construction are often measured as leaf mass per area (LMA) and the deciduousness strategies (deciduous, semideciduous or evergreen) used as proxy to LLS (evergreen species having longest leaf duration compared to semideciduous and deciduous species). According to the leaf economic spectrum theory, a positive correlation between LMA and LLS is expected, with evergreen species having higher LMA than deciduous species. Nonetheless, aridity constraints increase leaf maintenance costs in plants, and the deciduous strategy turns to be the most common leaf exchange behavior in Seasonally Dry Tropical Forests (SDTF). In this study we are testing if the relation of LMA and LLS is influenced by aridity in SDTF, using the length of growing season (LOS) as a proxy of overall response for drought. We expect that LMA: LLS relationship will become stronger towards driest sites. The caatinga vegetation is the largest SDTF in the New World, covering an area of ca. 850,000 km<sup>2</sup> located in North-eastern Brazil. Although the region is characterized by having low amount of rainfall (<1100 mm per year), there is a gradient of aridity that affects plants living across these areas. We applied the near-surface remote method trough the usage of phenocams to simultaneously monitor leaf phenology of 27 tree species from four areas of Caatinga, in a gradient of aridity ranging from 387 mm to 800 mm total annual rainfall. For these species, we used the green chromatic coordinate (Gcc) time series to calculate the phenological transition dates of Start (SOS) and End (EOS) and the Length (LOS) of Growing Season, during two to four growing seasons, from 2017 to 2021. LOS presented high variability among species, ranging from 143 days for <em>Manihot pseudoglaziovii</em> and 314 days for <em>Aspidosperma pyrifolium</em>. In general, LOS tend to be shorter for species towards driest sites and analyes of the relation between LMA and LLS are suggesting trade-offs important to understand the acquisitive strategies of plants from semi-arid vegetation with implications for carbon fluxes.</p><p>Supported by FAPESP (#2019/11835-2); FAPESP-NERC (FAPESP #2015/50488-5; #2017/17380-1), by CNPq and FACEPE (Caatinga-FLUX, #483223/2011-5 and Caatinga-FLUX Fase 2, #0062-1.07/15); UNESP CAPES-PrInt Program (grant #88887.310463/2018-00; schoolarship ##88887.512218/2020-00) and CNPq productitivity fellowship (#428055/2018-4).</p>
Several species of Cichla successfully colonized lakes and reservoirs of Brazil, since the 1960’s, causing serious damage to local wildlife. In this study, 135 peacock bass were collected in a reservoir complex in order to identify if they represented a single dominant species or multiple ones, as several Cichla species have been reported in the basin. Specimens were identified by color pattern, morphometric and meristic data, and using mitochondrial markers COI, 16S rDNA and Control Region (CR). Overlapping morphological data and similar coloration patterns prevented their identification using the taxonomic keys to species identification available in the literature. However, Bayesian and maximum likelihood from sequencing data demonstrated the occurrence of a single species, Cichla kelberi. A single haplotype was observed for the 16S and CR, while three were detected for COI, with a dominant haplotype present in 98.5% of the samples. The extreme low diversity of the transplanted C. kelberi evidenced a limited number of founding maternal lineages. The success of this colonization seems to rely mainly on abiotic factors, such as increased water transparency of lentic environments that favor visual predators that along with the absence of predators, have made C. kelberi a successful invader of these reservoirs.
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