Global warming has potentially catastrophic impacts in Amazonia, while at the same time maintenance of the Amazon forest offers one of the most valuable and cost-effective options for mitigating climate change. We know that the El Niño phenomenon, caused by temperature oscillations of surface water in the Pacific, has serious impacts in Amazonia, causing droughts and forest fires (as in 1997-19...

The willingness of a species to leave a forest fragment is a prerequisite for subsequent dispersal across the intervening non-forested landscape. Species with stringent fidelity to the forest patch will be isolated from populations in other fragments and predisposed to factors that promote extinction of local populations. Here, we document which fruit-feeding, forest-dwelling butterflies occur ...

Aspergillus niger F7 isolated from soil was found to be the potent producer of cellulase and xylanase. The residue of forest species Toona ciliata, Celtris australis, Cedrus deodara and Pinus roxburghii was selected as substrate for biodegradation study due to its easy availability and wide use in industry. It was subjected to alkali (sodium hydroxide) treatment for enhancing its degradation. B...

Our goal was to identify herbivory patterns from two insect guilds associated with Cnidoscolus quercifolius in a tropical deciduous forest in northeastern Brazil. We sampled four different habitats: (1) forest edge, (2) mesic (near to the perennial water source), (3) forest interior and (4) rupestrian fields. Habitat edge had lower leaf damage than rupestrian, mesic and forest interior habitats...

The conversion of tropical habitats has dramatic implications on biodiversity and represents one the greatest conservation challenges our time. Seasonally Dry Tropical Forests (SDTF), which are disjointly distributed throughout Neotropics, especially susceptible to human activities. Caatinga Forest, located in semi-arid interior northeastern Brazil, not only largest most biologically diverse nu...

There is broad consensus among paleoanthropologists that meat-eating played a key role in the evolution of Homo, but the details of where, when, and why are hotly debated. It has been argued that increased faunivory was causally connected with hominin adaptation to open, savanna habitats. If savanna-dwelling chimpanzees eat meat more frequently than do forest chimpanzees, it would support the n...

Vegetation moisture and dry matter content are important indicators in predicting the behavior of fire and it is widely used in fire spread models. In this study, leaf fuel moisture content such as Live Fuel Moisture Content (LFMC), Leaf Relative Water Content (RWC), Dead Fuel Moisture Content (DFMC), and Leaf Dry Matter Content (LDMC) (hereinafter known as moisture content indices (MCI)) were ...

Allometric equations allow aboveground tree biomass and carbon stock to be estimated from tree size. The allometric scaling theory suggests the existence of a universal power-law relationship between tree biomass and tree diameter with a fixed scaling exponent close to 8/3. In addition, generic empirical models, like Chave's or Brown's models, have been proposed for tropical forests in America ...

Southern muriquis (Brachyteles arachnoides) inhabit evergreen and semideciduous forest fragments in southeastern Brazil. Contrary to the broadleaf evergreen forests, the seasonal mesophytic forests experience a relatively severe dry season, which aff ects the muriquis’ diet. Th rough behavioral sampling of feeding activity, I determined the diet of a group of muriquis in a semideciduous forest ...