Incorporating biodiversity responses to land use change scenarios for preventing emerging zoonotic diseases in areas of unknown host-pathogen interactions.

The need to reconcile food production, the safeguarding of nature, and the protection of public health is imperative in a world of continuing global change, particularly in the context of risks of emerging zoonotic disease (EZD). In this paper, we explored potential land use strategies to reduce EZD risks using a landscape approach. We focused on strategies for cases where the dynamics of pathogen transmission among species were poorly known and the ideas of "land-use induced spillover" and "landscape immunity" could be used very broadly. We first modeled three different land-use change scenarios in a region of transition between the Cerrado and the Atlantic Forest biodiversity hotspots. The land-use strategies used to build our scenarios reflected different proportions of native vegetation cover, as a proxy of habitat availability. We then evaluated the effects of the proportion of native vegetation cover on the occupancy probability of a group of mammal species and analyzed how the different land-use scenarios might affect the distribution of species in the landscape and thus the risk of EZD. We demonstrate that these approaches can help identify potential future EZD risks, and can thus be used as decision-making tools by stakeholders, with direct implications for improving both environmental and socio-economic outcomes.

Competition and resource breadth shape niche variation and overlap in multiple trophic dimensions.

Competition plays a central role in the maintenance of biodiversity. A backbone of classic niche theory is that local coexistence of competitors is favoured by the contraction or divergence of species' niches. However, this effect should depend on the diversity of resources available in the local environment, particularly when resources vary in multiple ecological dimensions. Here, we investigated how available resource breadth (i.e. prey diversity) and competition together shape multidimensional niche variation (between and within individuals) and interspecific niche overlap in 42 populations of congeneric tropical frog species. We modelled realized niches in two key trophic dimensions (prey size and carbon stable isotopes) and sampled available food resources to quantify two-dimensional resource breadth. We found a 14-fold variation in multidimensional population niche width across populations, most of which was accounted for by within-individual diet variation. This striking variation was predicted by an interaction whereby individual niche breadth increased with resource breadth and decreased with the number of congeneric competitors. These ecological gradients also interact to influence the degree of niche overlap between species, which surprisingly decreased with population total niche width, providing novel insights on how similar species can coexist in local communities. Together, our results emphasize that patterns of exploitation of resources in multiple dimensions are driven by both competitive interactions and extrinsic factors such as local resource breadth.

Prey Limitation Drives Variation in Allometric Scaling of Predator-Prey Interactions.

Ecologists have long searched for a universal size-scaling constant that governs trophic interactions. Although this is an appealing theoretical concept, predator-prey size ratios (PPSRs) vary strikingly across and within natural food webs, meaning that predators deviate from their optimal prey size by consuming relatively larger or smaller prey. Here we suggest that this unexpected variation in allometric scaling of trophic interactions can be predicted by gradients of prey limitation consistent with predictions from optimal foraging theory. We analyzed >6,000 trophic interactions of 52 populations from four tropical frog species along a gradient of prey limitation. The mean of PPSR and its variance differed up to two orders of magnitude across and within food webs. Importantly, as prey availability decreased across food webs, PPSR and its variance became more size dependent. Thus, trophic interactions did not follow a fixed allometric scaling but changed predictably with the strength of prey limitation. Our results emphasize the importance of ecological contexts in arranging food webs and the need to incorporate ecological drivers of PPSR and its variance in food web and community models.

Drivers of individual niche variation in coexisting species.

Although neglected by classic niche theory, individual variation is now recognized as a prevalent phenomenon in nature with evolutionary and ecological relevance. Recent theory suggests that differences in individual variation across competitors can affect species coexistence and community patterns. However, the degree of individual variation is flexible across wild populations and we still know little about the ecological drivers of this variation across populations of single species and, especially, across coexisting species. Here, we aimed to (a) elucidate the major drivers of individual niche variation in natural communities and (b) to determine how consistent this variation is across coexisting species and communities. We analysed natural patterns of individual-level niche variation in four species of coexisting generalist frogs across a wide range of tropical communities. Specifically, we used gut contents and stable isotopes (δ13 C and δ15 N) from frog species and their prey to quantify individual niche specialization. Then, we combined data on local community structure, availability of prey, phylogenetic relationships and predator-prey size models to test how this variation is related to four ecological factors which are predicted to be key drivers of individual specialization: intraspecific competition, interspecific competition, ecological opportunity (i.e., diversity of resources) and predation. We found that the degree of individual trophic specialization varied by up to ninefold across populations within the same species. This sizable variation in trophic specialization across populations was at least partially explained by gradients of density of competitors (both conspecifics and heterospecifics) and intraguild predation. However, the specific relationships between individual specialization and these ecological gradients were strongly species-specific. As consequences, the identity of the species with more individual variation changed among sites and there was typically no spatial correlation in the degree of individual specialization across coexisting species. Our results show that individual niche specialization within and across species can be strongly context-dependent and that hierarchies of individual variation among coexisting species are not necessarily consistent across communities. Recent theory suggests that this pattern could lead to concurrent changes in competitive interactions across sites and thereby could play a key role in species coexistence at the landscape level. Our results suggest that individual variation across and within coexisting species has the potential to affect not only species coexistence at local communities, but also regional diversity patterns.

Composition and structure of bird communities in vegetational gradients of Bodoquena Mountains, western Brazil.

The informations of bird species distribution in different habitats and the structure of their communities are crucial for bird conservation. We tested the differences in composition, richness and abundance of birds in different phytophysiognomies at Bodoquena Mountains, western Brazil, and we demonstrated the variations in richness and abundance of birds between different trophic groups. Sampling was conducted between July 2011 and June 2012 in 200 point counts arranged in the study area. A total of 3350 contacts were obtained belonging to 156 bird species. Woodland savannas, seasonal forests and arboreal savannas had higher bird abundance and richness, while riparian forests, clean pastures and dirty pastures had smaller values of these parameters. The bird community was organized according to local vegetational gradient, with communities of forests, open areas and savannas, although many species occurred in more than one vegetation type. The insectivorous, omnivorous, frugivorous and gramnivorous birds composed most of the community. These data showed how important environmental heterogeneity is to bird communities. Furthermore, the presence of extensive patches of natural habitats, the small distance between these patches and the permeability of pastures, with high arboreal and shrubby cover, are indicated as important factors to maintain the bird diversity.

Estimating dispersal and gene flow in the neotropical freshwater turtle Hydromedusa maximiliani (Chelidae) by combining ecological and genetic methods

Hydromedusa maximiliani is a vulnerable neotropical freshwater turtle endemic to mountainous regions of the Atlantic rainforest in southeastern Brazil. Random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) was used to estimate the gene flow and dispersal for individuals inhabiting rivers and streams within a drainage. Nine primers generated 27 scoreable bands, of which 9 (33 per cent) were polymorphic and produced 12 RAPD phenotypes. The gene flow estimates (Nm) among turtles inhabiting different rivers and streams were variable, ranging from 0.09 to 3.00 (mean: 0.60). For some loci, the rates of gene flow could offset population differentiation (Nm > 1), whereas for others random genetic drift could result in population divergence (Nm < 1). Since the genetic variation of this turtle seems to be structured according to the natural hierarchical system of rivers and streams within drainages, management programs involving translocations between different regions across the geographical range of H. maximiliani should be viewed with caution