An integrative analysis uncovers a new, pseudo-cryptic species of Amazonian marmoset (Primates: Callitrichidae: Mico) from the arc of deforestation

Amazonia has the richest primate fauna in the world. Nonetheless, the diversity and distribution of Amazonian primates remain little known and the scarcity of baseline data challenges their conservation. These challenges are especially acute in the Amazonian arc of deforestation, the 2500 km long southern edge of the Amazonian biome that is rapidly being deforested and converted to agricultural and pastoral landscapes. Amazonian marmosets of the genus Mico are little known endemics of this region and therefore a priority for research and conservation efforts. However, even nascent conservation efforts are hampered by taxonomic uncertainties in this group, such as the existence of a potentially new species from the Juruena–Teles Pires interfluve hidden within the M. emiliae epithet. Here we test if these marmosets belong to a distinct species using new morphological, phylogenomic, and geographic distribution data analysed within an integrative taxonomic framework. We discovered a new, pseudo-cryptic Mico species hidden within the epithet M. emiliae, here described and named after Horacio Schneider, the pioneer of molecular phylogenetics of Neotropical primates. We also clarify the distribution, evolutionary and morphological relationships of four other Mico species, bridging Linnean, Wallacean, and Darwinian shortfalls in the conservation of primates in the Amazonian arc of deforestation.

Distribuição espaço-temporal das queimadas no bioma Cerrado (1999/2018) e sua ocorrência conforme os diferentes tipos de cobertura e uso do solo

Usualmente empregadas pelos povos tradicionais, as queimadas também têm sido utilizadas para o desmatamento de vegetação natural e incorporação de atividades agropecuárias. Diante desse contexto, tem-se como objetivo analisar a distribuição espaço-temporal dos focos de queimadas no bioma Cerrado no período de 1999 a 2018, verificando sua ocorrência entre os diferentes tipos de cobertura e uso do solo, no intuito de avaliar a hipótese de que a prática de queimadas esteja recorrentemente associada à desmatamentos e à implantação de atividades agropecuárias. Para tanto, foram compilados, organizados e processados em ambiente SIG, arquivos vetoriais de focos de queimadas, a partir do Banco de Dados de Queimadas (BDQ/INPE), e arquivos raster de mapeamentos de cobertura e uso do solo do Cerrado, elaborados e disponibilizados pelo Projeto MapBiomas, ambos dados referente ao bioma Cerrado e ao recorte temporal de 1999 a 2018. Em termos médios, verifica-se a ocorrência de 65.513 focos anuais de queimadas, porém, em alguns anos a quantidade de queimadas atinge o montante de 137.918 focos, como visto em 2007. Há uma concentração das queimadas no período seco, especialmente, no trimestre agosto-setembro-outubro, que responde por 72% das ocorrências anuais. A maior densidade de queimadas é percebida ao longo da fronteira agrícola na região do MATOPIBA e próxima ao Arco do Desmatamento, nos estados do Maranhão, Tocantins e de Mato Grosso, ao passo que evidencia-se a maior incidência das queimadas sobre determinadas classes de cobertura e uso do solo, sobretudo representadas por formações savânicas e campestres. Space-temporal distribution of fires in the Cerrado biome (1999/2018) and their occurence according to different types of coverage and soil uses A B S T R A C TUsually employed by traditional communities, fires have also been used to deforest and incorporate agricultural activities. Given this context, the objective is to analyze the spatio-temporal distribution of the fires in the Cerrado biome, from 1999 to 2018, verifying their occurrence between the different types of cover and land use, in order to assess the hypotheses that the practice of fires is recurrently associated with deforestation and the implementation of agricultural activities. For this purpose, were compiled, organized and processed in a GIS environment, fires focus from the Burn Database of the National Institute for Space Research and mappings of cover and land use, elaborated and availabled by the MapBiomas Project, both data referring to the Cerrado biome and over the years 1999 to 2018. On average, there are 65,513 annual fires, but in some years the amount of burns reaches the amount of 137,918 – as seen in 2007. There is a concentration of fires in the dry period, mainly in the August-September-October, which accounts for 72% of annual fires. The highest density of fires occurs mainly along the agricultural frontier in the MATOPIBA region and close to the Arc of Deforestation, specifically in the states of Maranhão, Tocantins and Mato Grosso, while there is a greater incidence of fires on certain classes of coverage and land use, especially represented by savanna and grassland formation, which corroborates the hypothesis of the use of fires to convert vegetation cover into anthropic uses.Keywords: Fires, Cerrado, Cover and land use.

Tropical deforestation induces thresholds of reproductive viability and habitat suitability in Earth’s largest eagles

Apex predators are threatened globally, and their local extinctions are often driven by failures in sustaining prey acquisition under contexts of severe prey scarcity. The harpy eagle Harpia harpyja is Earth’s largest eagle and the apex aerial predator of Amazonian forests, but no previous study has examined the impact of forest loss on their feeding ecology. We monitored 16 active harpy eagle nests embedded within landscapes that had experienced 0 to 85% of forest loss, and identified 306 captured prey items. Harpy eagles could not switch to open-habitat prey in deforested habitats, and retained a diet based on canopy vertebrates even in deforested landscapes. Feeding rates decreased with forest loss, with three fledged individuals dying of starvation in landscapes that succumbed to 50–70% deforestation. Because landscapes deforested by > 70% supported no nests, and eaglets could not be provisioned to independence within landscapes > 50% forest loss, we established a 50% forest cover threshold for the reproductive viability of harpy eagle pairs. Our scaling-up estimate indicates that 35% of the entire 428,800-km2 Amazonian ‘Arc of Deforestation’ study region cannot support breeding harpy eagle populations. Our results suggest that restoring harpy eagle population viability within highly fragmented forest landscapes critically depends on decisive forest conservation action.

Environmental Threats over Amazonian Indigenous Lands

This study investigates the main threats related to environmental degradation that affect Amazonian Indigenous Lands (ILs). Through a cluster analysis, we group ILs according to the set of common environmental threats that occur within and outside their limits. The results show that most of the 383 ILs are affected internally by a combination of different environmental threats, namely: deforestation, forest degradation, fires, mining, croplands, pastures, and roads. However, the ILs affected by multiple and relatively severe threats are mainly located in the arc of deforestation and the Roraima state. The threats related to forest loss (deforestation, forest degradation, and fires) are more intense in the ILs’ buffer zones than within, showing that ILs effectively promote environmental preservation. In the cluster analysis, we identified seven clusters that are characterized by common environmental threats within and around their limits, and, based on these results, we have outlined four environmental policy priorities to be strengthened and applied in Amazonian ILs: protecting ILs’ buffer zones; strengthening surveillance actions, and combating illegal deforestation, forest degradation, and mining activities in ILs; preventing and fighting fires; and removing invaders from all ILs in the Amazon. In this study, we warn that the threats presented make the Indigenous peoples in the Amazon more vulnerable. To guarantee indigenous peoples’ rights, illegal actions in these territories and their surroundings must be contained, and quickly.

Relationship between Land Property Security and Brazilian Amazon Deforestation in the Mato Grosso State during the Period 2013–2018

This research examines the relations between forest decrease and legal property security in Mato Grosso State, Brazil. The study area encompasses 133,090.4 km2 of the Amazonian biome, belonging to the Brazilian Legal Amazon, located at the arc of deforestation where agriculture and cattle ranching compete with the native vegetation cover. Cadastral monitoring and certification of productive land plots are Brazil’s public policies to implement to tackle these environmental challenges. In this context, we crossed the Land Management System (SIGEF) dataset launched in 2013 from the National Institute for Agrarian Reform and the Amazon Deforestation Monitoring Program (PRODES) dataset from the Brazilian National Institute of Space Research (INPE). The analysis considered the 2013–2018 period with public and private land plots and evaluated the differences in smallholders and large landowners’ deforesting behavior. The results demonstrate that the primacy of certified properties was in private land (94%), with a small portion of the public land (6%). Most properties have <80% forest coverage on certification, corresponding to 85% on private properties and 95% on public properties. This fact is important because environmental legislation in the Amazon region establishes a legal reserve of 80% in forest areas. The results show that the smaller the property, the greater the percentage of proportional deforestation in the certification. In the biennium, considering before and after certification, a proportion of 8% of private properties and 28% of public properties with vegetation cover had deforestation. The results demonstrate the tendency for smaller properties to deforest proportionally more than larger ones. The annual difference series in properties registered in 2015 demonstrates that the highest deforestation occurrence was in the year of certification in private properties and the subsequent year in public properties. The SIGEF system is relatively new, requiring more time to establish a consolidated trend. The combination of property rights and effective compliance with environmental legislation allows the conservation of the forest. However, it is essential to improve inspection. Land ownership inserts the owner into a system of rules to properly use natural resources, constituting a legal instrument to guide human action.

Technical note: Low meteorological influence found in 2019 Amazonia fires

The sudden increase in Amazon fires early in the 2019 fire season made global headlines. While it has been heavily speculated that the fires were caused by deliberate human ignitions or human-induced landscape changes, there have also been suggestions that meteorological conditions could have played a role. Here, we ask two questions: were the 2019 fires in the Amazon unprecedented in the historical record, and did the meteorological conditions contribute to the increased burning? To answer this, we take advantage of a recently developed modelling framework which optimises a simple fire model against observations of burnt area and whose outputs are described as probability densities. This allowed us to test the probability of the 2019 fire season occurring due to meteorological conditions alone. The observations show that the burnt area was higher than in previous years in regions where there is already substantial deforestation activity in the Amazon. Overall, 11 % of the area recorded the highest early season (June–August) burnt area since the start of our observational record, with areas in Brazil's central arc of deforestation recording the highest ever monthly burnt area in August. However, areas outside of the regions of widespread deforestation show less burnt area than the historical average, and the optimised model shows that this low burnt area would have extended over much of the eastern Amazon region, including in Brazil's central arc of deforestation with high fire occurrence in 2019. We show that there is a 9 % likelihood of the observed August fires being caused by meteorological conditions alone, decreasing to 6 %–7 % along the agricultural–humid forest interface in Brazil's central states and 8 % in Paraguay and Bolivia dry forests. Our results suggest that changes in land use, cover or management are the likely drivers of the substantial increase in the 2019 early fire season burnt area, especially in Brazil. Burnt area for September in the arc of deforestation had a 14 %–26 % probability of being caused by meteorological conditions, potentially coinciding with a shift in fire-related policy from South American governments.