Land-use and land-cover (LULC) changes are major drivers of biodiversity loss in semi-arid regions, such as the Caatinga biome located in the Northeast of Brazil. We investigated landscape dynamics and fragmentation in an area of the São Francisco Valley in the Brazilian Caatinga biome and measured the effect of these dynamics on ecological, functional and structural connectivity over a 33-year period (1985–2018). We calculated landscape connectivity indices based on graph theory to quantify the effect of further agricultural expansion on ecological connectivity at the landscape scale. We used a multicriteria decision analysis that integrates graph-based connectivity indices at the habitat patch scale, combined with an index of human disturbance to identify patches that, if conserved and restored, preserve the connectivity of the landscape most effectively. In the period studied, agriculture increased at a rate of 2104 ha/year, while native Caatinga vegetation decreased at a rate of 5203 ha/year. Both dense and open Caatinga became more fragmented, with the number of fragments increasing by 85.2% and 28.6%, respectively, whilst the average fragment size decreased by 84.8% and 6.1% for dense and open Caatinga, respectively. If agriculture patches were to expand by a 300 m buffer around each patch, the overall ecological connectivity could be reduced by 6–15%, depending on the species’ (small- to mid-size terrestrial vertebrates) mobility characteristics for which the connectivity indices were calculated. We provided explicit spatial connectivity and fragmentation information for the conservation and restoration of the Caatinga vegetation in the studied area. This information helps with conservation planning in this rapidly changing ecosystem.

Centris aenea Lepeletier is a solitary bee that has raised interest in management to pollinate crops, such as acerola, Malpighia emarginata. This study investigated the level of morphometric variability among populations of C. aenea from Northeastern Brazil. Traditional and geometric morphometric analyses were used. Head length, leg length, wing length, and wing shape were measured in samples (5-10 females) from eight localities. We did not ind statistically signi icant differences among the populations (P > 0.01). The partial wing warps were similar in the populations and indicated that the bees were not morphometrically different. Our results suggest that C. aenea shows low population morphometric variability and highlight the need for further investigations on population variation in this species, preferably including populations sampled at the extremes of their geographic distribution. Signi icant insight into the population variation of C. aenea will probably require the use of molecular markers to allow a comparative approach between morphometric variability and genetic variability.

Indistinguishability of particles is a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics1. For all elementary and quasiparticles observed to date—including fermions, bosons and Abelian anyons—this principle guarantees that the braiding of identical particles leaves the system unchanged2,3. However, in two spatial dimensions, an intriguing possibility exists: braiding of non-Abelian anyons causes rotations in a space of topologically degenerate wavefunctions4–8. Hence, it can change the observables of the system without violating the principle of indistinguishability. Despite the well-developed mathematical description of non-Abelian anyons and numerous theoretical proposals9–22, the experimental observation of their exchange statistics has remained elusive for decades. Controllable many-body quantum states generated on quantum processors offer another path for exploring these fundamental phenomena. Whereas efforts on conventional solid-state platforms typically involve Hamiltonian dynamics of quasiparticles, superconducting quantum processors allow for directly manipulating the many-body wavefunction by means of unitary gates. Building on predictions that stabilizer codes can host projective non-Abelian Ising anyons9,10, we implement a generalized stabilizer code and unitary protocol23 to create and braid them. This allows us to experimentally verify the fusion rules of the anyons and braid them to realize their statistics. We then study the prospect of using the anyons for quantum computation and use braiding to create an entangled state of anyons encoding three logical qubits. Our work provides new insights about non-Abelian braiding and, through the future inclusion of error correction to achieve topological protection, could open a path towards fault-tolerant quantum computing.

Geometric morphometrics is a tool capable of measuring the response of organisms to different environmental pressures. We tested the hypothesis that E. cordata wing morphometry, as an indicator of response to environmental pressure, it would vary depending on habitat changes, in the Atlantic Forest, Savanna and dry forest (Caatinga). For analysis of wing shape and size, 18 landmarks were digitized at the intersections of the wing veins 348 individuals. Except for the two populations sampled in Chapada Diamantina, the wing shape had significant statistical variations among the populations (p < 0.05). The wing size variation was also statistically significant among populations (p < 0.05).  Although E. cordata is a species tolerant to different environments, the observed morphometric variability may be related to population adaptations to the conditions of each phytophysiognomy.

Sleep aggregations have been registered for some species of solitary bees and wasps. In this note we describe the aggregation behaviour of Centris xanthomelaena Moure & Castro bees in their inactive periods. The dormitories were discovered close to the bee nesting sites, in a Caatinga area. We monitored the males and females at the sleeping site for 16 consecutive days in July 2017. We observed that females of C. xanthomelaena spent the night outside their nests, indry branches of Mimosa tenuifl ora (Fabaceae). Furthermore, males and females have shared the dormitories, and sometimes they formed mixed ones. Both males and females fl ew around the nearest dormitories during all observation days. The data about the sleep behaviour of C. xanthomelaena will contribute to the understanding of these aspects within the Centris genus.