Assessment of available anatomical characters for linking living mammals to fossil taxa in phylogenetic analyses.

Analyses of living and fossil taxa are crucial for understanding biodiversity through time. The total evidence method allows living and fossil taxa to be combined in phylogenies, using molecular data for living taxa and morphological data for living and fossil taxa. With this method, substantial overlap of coded anatomical characters among living and fossil taxa is vital for accurately inferring topology. However, although molecular data for living species are widely available, scientists generating morphological data mainly focus on fossils. Therefore, there are fewer coded anatomical characters in living taxa, even in well-studied groups such as mammals. We investigated the number of coded anatomical characters available in phylogenetic matrices for living mammals and how these were phylogenetically distributed across orders. Eleven of 28 mammalian orders have less than 25% species with available characters; this has implications for the accurate placement of fossils, although the issue is less pronounced at higher taxonomic levels. In most orders, species with available characters are randomly distributed across the phylogeny, which may reduce the impact of the problem. We suggest that increased morphological data collection efforts for living taxa are needed to produce accurate total evidence phylogenies.

Proposta de uma máquina para colheita mecanizada de babaçu (Orbignya phalerata Mart. ) para a agricultura familiar / Proposal of harvest's babaçu machine (Orbignya phalerata Mart.) for the small farms

O babaçu é uma planta de importância capital na economia de subsistência do norte do Brasil. Sua configuração sócio-ambiental o torna destaque na situação regional amazônica, onde os produtos advindos do babaçu possibilitam renda para a camada mais pobre da população amazônica, além da questão ambiental que é conotada à preservação dos babaçuais naturais. Um dos gargalos técnicos da produção do babaçu, em especial visando a extração do óleo de babaçu, é a colheita feita de forma manual e no sistema extrativista. O objetivo deste trabalho é propor o conceito de uma colhedora de babaçu moto-mecanizada, capaz de trabalhar em cultivos artificiais, assim como em florestas naturais. Foi utilizada a metodologia de projeto da matriz morfológica, onde foram elencadas as possíveis combinações de mecanismos e elementos para uma colhedora de babaçu. Como resultado foi obtido um conceito teórico, sendo concluída a viabilidade técnica de tal projeto, em estudos futuros pretende-se desenvolver estudos de viabilidade técnica detalhados, assim como estudos de viabilidade econômica.

The babaçu is an important plant in subsistence economy in northern Brazil. The environment-social configuration of babaçu is prominent in the Amazonian regional situation, where its products are a means of income for the more impoverished Amazonian population, besides the question of the environment, which is relative to its preservation in the forest. One of the technical obstacles to babaçu production, especially with regard to extracting its oil, is manual harvesting and extractive system. The objective of this work is to propose motorized harvesting in both artificial and natural forests. It was used the project methodology morphological matrix, that numbering the possible configurations os mechanism and elements for the babaçu's harvest. The result was a theoretical concept, it has been concluded the technical viability of project, future studies they intend to develop the detail technical viability as well as the economic viability.