Conservation actions based on red lists do not capture the functional and phylogenetic diversity of birds in Brazil.

Red Lists of threatened species play a critical role in conservation science and practice. However, policy-making based on Red Lists ignores ecological and evolutionary consequences of losing biodiversity because these lists focus on species alone. To decide if relying on Red Lists alone can help to conserve communities' functional (FD) and phylogenetic (PD) diversity, it is useful to evaluate whether Red List categories represent species with diverse ecological traits and evolutionary histories. Additionally, local scale analyses using regional Red Lists should represent more realistic pools of co-occurring species and thereby better capture eventual losses of FD and PD. Here, we used 21 life-history traits and a phylogeny for all Brazilian birds to determine whether species assigned under the IUCN global Red List, the Brazilian national, and regional Red Lists capture more FD and PD than expected by chance. We also built local Red Lists and analysed if they capture more FD and PD at the local scale. Further, we investigated whether individual threat categories have species with greater FD and PD than expected by chance. At any given scale, threat categories did not capture greater FD or PD than expected by chance. Indeed, mostly categories captured equal or less FD or PD than expected by chance. These findings would not have great consequences if Red Lists were not often considered as a major decision support tool for policy-making. Our results challenge the practice of investing conservation resources based only on species Red Lists because, from an ecological and evolutionary point of view, this would be the same as protecting similar or random sets of species. Thus, new prioritization methods, such as the EDGE of Existence initiative, should be developed and applied to conserve species' ecological traits and evolutionary histories at different spatial scales.

Enterobacterial detection and Escherichia coli antimicrobial resistance in parrots seized from the illegal wildlife trade.

Enteric bacteria are considered important potential pathogens in avian clinical medicine, causing either primary or opportunistic infections. The aim of this study was to evaluate the frequency of enterobacteria in the intestinal microbiota of psittacine birds and to determine the antimicrobial susceptibility of the Escherichia coli isolates cultured. Fecal samples were collected from 300 parrots captured from the illegal wildlife trade in Goiás, Brazil and were processed using conventional bacteriological procedures. A total of 508 isolates were obtained from 300 fecal samples: 172 E. coli (33.9% of isolates; 57.3% of individuals); 153 Enterobacter spp. (30.1% of isolates; 51.0% of individuals); 89 Klebsiella spp. (17.7% of isolates; 29.7% of individuals); 59 Citrobacter spp. (11.6% of isolates; 19.7% of individuals), 21 Proteus vulgaris (4.2% of isolates; 7.0% of individuals), 5 Providencia alcalifaciens (0.98% of isolates; 1.67% of individuals), 5 Serratia sp. (0.98% of isolates; 1.67% of individuals), 3 Hafnia aivei (0.59% of isolates; 1.00% of individuals), and 1 Salmonella sp. (0.20% of isolates; 0.33% of individuals). Escherichia coli isolates were subsequently tested for susceptibility to the following antibiotics: amoxicillin (70.93% of the isolates were resistant), ampicillin (75.58%), ciprofloxacin (23.25%), chloramphenicol (33.14%), doxycycline (64.53%), enrofloxacin (41.28%), tetracycline (69.19%), and sulfonamide (71.51%). Multi-resistance to three and four groups of antibiotics occurred in 40 samples (23.25%) and 4 samples (2.32%), respectively. These results demonstrate that illegally traded birds are carriers of potentially pathogenic bacteria, including E. coli strains with antimicrobial resistance.