A produção de conhecimento e a conservação das aves neotropicais: o caso das espécies silvestres, endêmicas e ameaçadas de extinção

Abstract

Knowledge about biodiversity is essential to direct efficient conservation actions. However, in the Neotropical region there is a lack of financing and resources aimed at the conservation of biodiversity, making it necessary to direct the few existing resources to the most priority groups and actions. Therefore, it is important to know these groups are. Within the group of birds, there are knowledge gaps mainly for endemic and endangered wild species. In the first article, submitted to the journal Ornithology Research and entitled “Are globally threatened, endemic landbirds species conservation priorities in Brazil? The Systematic Review ”, we evaluated endemic and globally threatened terrestrial birds in Brazil that we identified using the‘ Country profiles ’from the BirdLife International database. Scientific production in the form of published documents was identified using the SCOPUS bibliometric database between 1870 and 2019. We identified a total of 93 species of Brazilian endemic terrestrial birds classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as endangered. Scientific production was strongly distorted, with 10 species associated with almost half (49.59%) of all published documents and 16 species not yet associated with any document published in the database. The number of documents increased as of 2005. Keyword analysis indicates that the studies cover a wide range of types, although there is a lack of information to support conservation decision-making. We conclude that more research on endemic and globally threatened terrestrial birds in Brazil is urgently required. The lack of knowledge about these species can compromise the development of effective conservation actions and we recommend a greater investment in research aimed at these species. In the second article entitled “Knowledge produced versus necessary knowledge: the knowledge gaps and the impact of IUCN on the conservation of endemic and endangered neotropical wild birds” we seek to assess the relationship between the knowledge produced and the knowledge necessary for the conservation of these species. For that, we extracted information from literature, from digital databases and from the IUCN red list. Metrics related to species rarity and visibility and countries' research capacity were analyzed to identify the factors that influence publications. We identified 689 types of documents without repetition about 250 species of endangered and endemic neotropical wild birds. Scientific production on this group has not kept up with the global growth trend and has remained very low with most species (90%) having less than five published documents. Only 25% of the species were responsible for more than 70% of the indexed studies and, in contrast, 65 species were not associated with any indexed document. The main characteristics that influenced the production of knowledge about the group were body size and cultural visibility. In addition, the collaboration network between the authors also expands the research capacity of the countries. Using the keywords pointed out in the documents, the most studied themes were: species characteristics (26.56%), ecological interactions (24.38%), genetics (14.08%), conservation (11.04%), evolution (10.74), parasites (9.08%), management of Conservation Units (8.71%), threats (7.98%) and distribution (7.40%). In the actions proposed by IUCN, the creation and expansion of protected areas (78.4%), studies on distribution (56.8%), abundance (42.4%), ecological requirements (38.8%) are indicated as priorities. The threats most cited by the IUCN were habitat loss and degradation (92.4%), hunting (12.4%), illegal trade (9.2%), invasive alien species (8.8%), climate change ( 8.4%), disturbances caused by cattle (8%), impacts of the use of pesticides (6.8%) and the impact of parasites (5.6%). Concluímos que diante da urgência para salvar as espécies, as lacunas eltoniana, prestoniana e hutchinsoniana sobre essas espécies precisam ser preenchidas e, para isso, o aumento do interesse dos pesquisadores e a ampliação do financiamento para projetos de pesquisa direcionados a esses temas e espécies parece ser o único caminho viável para muitas aves selvagens endêmicas e ameaçadas de extinção na região Neotropical.