Presença de alumínio em aves silvestres de sub-bosque em diferentes fragmentos de Mata Atlântica

Abstract

The Atlantic Forest north of the São Francisco River, known as the Pernambuco Endemism Center, is the most critical area of the biome, mainly due to the fragmentation caused by agricultural expansion. In the process of producing alcohol and sugar and fertilizing agricultural pastures, it is necessary to use fertilizers that may have metals, including aluminum, in their composition and contaminate the vironments and their fauna, being persistent in the environment and being able to accumulate at different levels of the food chain, exposing organisms to various types of damage. Among organisms that can suffer from this contamination are birds, which have specific eating habits, the ability to carry out large displacements, have high sensitivity and low levels of detoxifying enzymes. The combination of contaminated and fragmented habitat puts the most sensitive species at risk and can function as an ecological trap. Thus, it is expected that forest birds that inhabit fragments surrounded by sugarcane plantations present some level of contamination by non-essential metals and are trapped in an ecological trap. Thus, this work sough to identify, using feathers, whether wild understory birds are contaminated by aluminum potentially toxic from sugarcane crops and agricultural pastures and whether contaminated spaces can be considered ecological traps for the populations of these fragments, mainly those belonging to the insectivorous guild. The study was carried out, between September 2021 and October 2022, in three fragments of Atlantic Forest protected by the Centro Pernambuco de Endemismo (CPE) in Alagoas, two surrounded by sugarcane plantations and one by pasture. For analysis, 10 breast feathers of understory forest birds were collected and grouped by date and location. The samples were macerated, lyophilized, weighed, stored in a desiccator, digested in a microwave oven and analyzed using optical emission spectrometry whit inductively coupled plasma to determine the concentrations of aluminum (Al). Our study detected the presence of aluminum in all samples. On dry periods, birds of the species Schiffornis turdina from the Murici Ecological Station showed much higher aluminum concentrations than birds of the same species from Mata do Cedro. Furthermore, aluminum concentrations were much higher in September in the avifauna of RPPN Mata do Matão. The results showed the need for attention to the study areas that showed levels of aluminum contamination, which may be working as ecological traps.