Labs
The Applied Ecology & Conservation Lab comprises a research team from Life Sciences Department of the State University of Santa Cruz (UESC), and collaborators from other universities to conduct applied and basic ecological research in both land and marine realms, with a clear emphasis on the southern state of Bahia, northeastern Brazil. The lab team has been addressing ecological studies within a series of research lines, including 1. the assessment of biodiversity patterns and ecological processes in anthropogenic landscapes; 2. conservation genetics; 3. studies on ecological networks; 4. ecological restoration; 5. ecology and conservation of endemic and endangered species; 6. functional and phylogenetic diversity and 7. Spatial conservation prioritization in terrestrial and marine biomes.Since 2012, the lab has also an important partnership with the Public Prosecutor (PP) from Bahia, an institution that works in the legal defense of the Atlantic Forest (AF) biome. Our mission is to provide technical information to subsidise the PP on its activities, a collaboration with striking strategic importance for both institutions.
About 50,000 years ago, a primate species began to change the future of many species on the unique known habitable Planet in the universe. This primate built tools, created language, civilizations, gods and self-claimed “sapiens”. His domain over other species caused the rapid extinction of several species of large-bodied mammals, birds and reptiles. Most of these vertebrates played a pivotal role as herbivores, seed dispersers, predators in their ecosystems. At what extant we can lose more species? Can the Pleistocene megafauna extinction mirror the extinction of vertebrates in the present-day? What is the impact of vertebrate extinction on the ecosystem function? How do large mammals perceive and survive in highly fragmented forests? How complex ecosystem, such as tropical forests, respond to the extinction of species?
These and other intriguing questions is what my students, collaborators and I are investigating in the LaBiC.
These and other intriguing questions is what my students, collaborators and I are investigating in the LaBiC.
The Mammals Laboratory in Escola Superior de Agricultura “Luiz de Queiroz”, University of São Paulo began operations in February 2007 with the hiring of Prof. Dr. Alexandre Reis Percequillo. The research lines of lab involving taxonomy, systematics and biogeography of the subfamily Sigmodontinae, mammals inventories and natural history and ecology of rodents. Installed in a wide area of the ESALQ campus, the infrastructure of the laboratory includes rooms with Stereomicroscopes, classroom, and classrooms for undergraduate and postgraduate studies, preparation rooms of anatomical material and a reference collection of mammals. Currently the lab has a teacher in charge, Dr. Alexandre Reis Percequillo, a technical level, as well as undergraduates and graduate students.