Sexta, 08 de agosto às 13:30 horas
A tese de Doutorado " On the role of vegetation composition in structuring animal communities" ocorrerá no dia 08 de agosto, às 13:30 horas, presencialmente no Salão Azul do CCS, UFRJ.
Orientador:
Dr. Marcus Vinícius Vieira
Coorientadora:
Dra. Daniela Oliveira de Lima
Membros titulares:
Dra. Ana Cristina Petry
Dr. Jayme Prevedello
Dr. Marcos Figueiredo
Dra. Maria Lúcia Lorini
Membros suplentes:
Dr. Paulo Paiva
Dr. Natália Lacerda
RESUMO
Vegetation provides critical resources and environmental structure for animal communities, yet the composition of plant species remains underused in ecological modeling compared to vegetation structure or landscape metrics. This dissertation evaluates the role of vegetation composition in shaping animal communities in the Atlantic Forest through three complementary chapters. First, a systematic literature review reveals that vegetation composition often outperforms other environmental predictors of animal community structure, but remains underrepresented in studies conducted in the Southern Hemisphere. Second, using data from 251 sites across the Atlantic Forest, we show that vegetation composition consistently provides the strongest predictive power for community composition across five vertebrate groups (amphibians, birds, bats, primates, and non-volant small mammals), outperforming LiDAR-derived vegetation structure and landscape metrics in Co-correspondence and CCA-PLS models. Third, we use zeta diversity and Multi-Site Generalized Dissimilarity Modeling (MS-GDM) to explore patterns of species turnover, revealing that vegetation composition is a key driver of multisite similarity for several groups, though its importance varies with spatial scale and taxon. Collectively, our findings underscore the critical yet overlooked role of vegetation composition in animal community ecology and highlight its relevance for conservation planning in tropical biodiversity hotspots.