Efeito da perda de hábitat e pressão de caça sobre a diversidade funcional de primatas na América

• Autor(a) principal: Treichl, Nicolas Gaberz de Almeida [UNESP]
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Trabalho de conclusão de curso
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UNESP
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/11449/203772; http://www.athena.biblioteca.unesp.br/exlibris/bd/capelo/2020-02-27/000927046.pdf
• topic: Primatas; Mastozoologia; Sementes - Disseminação; Florestas tropicais; Paisagens fragmentadas; Habitat (Ecologia); Comunidades vegetais; Ecologia; América

Tropical forests are among the most endangered biomes due to human actions. The maintenance and regeneration of these ecosystems depend on specific functions performed by the species that compose it. Primates are important agents of the regulation of plant communities due to their role as seed dispersers. Nevertheless, around 60% of the all primate species are threatened, mostly due to habitat loss and hunting activities. Given the importance of the group and its state of vulnerability, it is of extreme importance to understand how the role played by primate species is being impacted, especially regarding seed dispersal. Here we aim to test the influence of fragment size and hunting pressure on the seed dispersal function played by neotropical primates. To do so, we created databases of species occurrence and functional traits linked to the seed dispersal function so that we could calculate four functional indices: functional richness (FRic), evenness (FEve), divergence (FDiv) and dispersal (FDis). We also evaluated species richness. We then assessed the relationship between these data and the fragment size and hunting pressure. Species richness was explained by fragment size and hunting pressure: the size of the fragment explains the variation of species richness when hunting pressure is absent or light to moderate, but not under high hunting pressure Fragment size better explained the variation of functional indices (FRic, FEve, FDiv, and FDis), but with a weak explanatory power (FEve, FDiv, and FDis), indicating that other variables must be included for more conclusive results. Our results show that the habitat loss represents a great part in the depreciation of seed dispersal functions by primates, with hunting pressure playing a smaller part, but deserving attention. The difficulties of working with hunting pressure and how it affects the ecosystem are mostle due to a lack of studies and ways evaluations models to this variable