The armadillos: from ecosystem services and online opinions to land use in agricultural landscapes

Abstract

This thesis revolves around the idea that armadillos represent an important group of mammals that perform essential ecological functions; however, over the years have received little attention from both scientists and the general public, which raises a concern about the conservation status of this group. Over the five chapters of this thesis, using armadillos as a study model, I demonstrate their importance for the terrestrial ecosystem, access the perceptions of the general public, develop a computacional tool to enable an increase in research and seek to understand how human-modified landscapes can influence this group. For that, I use a multidisciplinary approach. In Chapter 1, I identify the ecological contributions provided by armadillos directly related to humans, including social, economic, cultural, environmental, and biological aspects. In Chapter 2, I recognize through comments on social media that the general public has aroused great interest for this group, but they are unaware of most species and their corresponding ecological functions. In Chapter 3, I develop a tool that aims to enable the use of burrows as a low-cost non-invasive method to identify four species of armadillos. In Chapter 4, I elucidate that native forests inside and outside protected areas are essential for maintaining a species of armadillo, the nine-banded armadillo, in agricultural landscapes, with implications regarding the importance of the Brazilian Forest Code. Finally, Chapter 5 advances in the understanding of the underexplored consequences of human-modified landscapes on biodiversity, by showing how two poorly known armadillo species (Cabassous sp.) respond to a scenario predominantly dominated by sugarcane. Altogether, this results contribute to broadening our understanding of the importance of armadillos, as well as offer ways to improve the conservation status of this important group.

Building better conservation media for primates and people: A case study of orangutan rescue and rehabilitation YouTube videos

“…The analysis of social media‐derived data is part of a growing field called ‘digital conservation’ or ‘conservation culturomics’ that aims to quantify the impacts of online media, such as posts and comments on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Flickr on viewers' attitudes towards and behaviours about the environment (Ladle et al., 2016). Culturomics has provided valuable insight about conservation topics such as people's attitudes towards wildlife and ecosystems (Becken et al., 2017; Rodrigues, 2019), their perceptions and usage patterns of protected areas (Tenkanen et al., 2017) and the cultural ecosystem services provided by natural areas (Oteros‐Rozas et al., 2018). It has also exposed previously unknown threats to wildlife, such as illegal hunting of tapirs, armadillos and other species in Brazil (El Bizri et al., 2015).…”