EPHI Brazil – Team & Institutions

I am an Associate Professor at Universidade Federal do Paraná. Currently, my studies are focused on the structure of interaction networks, plant reproductive biology and patterns of community organization in the Atlantic Forest. I have also more applied interests, for example, the restoration of mutualistic interactions using tools of interaction networks and functional ecology and the role of pollination interactions to the provision of ecosystem services, such as food production. My main role in the EPHI project consists of advising undergraduate and graduate students, contributing with field data quality, elaborating project dissemination materials and result reports, giving support to activities organization and supervision of the work of the whole team. I am also part of the management committee of the Brazilian Network for Plant-Pollinator Interactions (REBIPP), secretary of the Brazilian Association of Ecology Science and Conservation (ABECO), and assistant coordinator of the Biodiversity area at Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES).

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I am a Post Doc at the Universidade Federal do Paraná in a partnership with Swiss Federal Research Institute (WSL) and Mater Natura – Instituto de Estudos Ambientais. Throughout my career, I have studied the mechanisms driving the mutualistic interactions among plants and animals, as well as the functional and phylogenetic relationships among the mutualistic partners. In the EPHI project, I am the coordinator of the Brazilian team, working in the financial administration, communication with all parts in the project and training of human resources in field data collection and management.

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I have an undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences and with a master degree in Ecology and Conservation at Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR). I study hoa plant-hummingbird interactions vary across environmental gradients. Specifically, I am interested in the effects of plant functional composition on interactions and how abiotic factors affect plant functional structure. My role in the EPHI project is to collect data in three high elevation sites and coordinate the botanic work of all EPHI sites of Brazil.

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I am a biologist with a graduate degree in Ecology and Conservation from the Universidade Federal do Paraná. My main interests are understanding how behaviour and interactions, at the species and community levels, respectively, shape population and community dynamics in evolutionary contexts. Another interest is how information about these processes can be used in conservation. My role in the EPHI project is data collection on flower abundance and plant-hummingbird interactions in transects located at Parque Estadual da Serra do Mar – Núcleo Cunha.

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I have an undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences from Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná – PUCPR. My special interest is natural history, animal-plant interaction (birds and insects), documentation of biodiversity, collaboration in citizen science and scientific photography techniques. I believe that art is an important tool for science, and I dedicate myself to poetry, cooking and gardening as forms of expression. In this project, I work in the Parque Estadual Serra do Mar – Núcleo Picinguaba, Ubatuba – São Paulo and at Fazenda Bananal, in Paraty – Rio de Janeiro. I participate in all aspects of data collection, from the installation of cameras, counting and identification of plants and hummingbirds to tabulation. I intend to follow my academic career by developing studies related to the project and contributing decisively to this line of research.

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I am a biologist from the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR). Since my graduation, I have dedicated myself to research and fieldwork in ecology and conservation. I have a particular interest in ornithology, especially in what concerns the behaviour of birds. The field is one of the parts of my work that I have a special appreciation for. Being able to be in direct contact with what I study motivates me to continue contributing to science and conservation of biodiversity, besides providing moments of great well-being and harmony. In the EPHI project, I work as a field assistant, being one of those responsible for data collection at Parque Estadual da Serra do Mar, in Cunha, São Paulo, the intermediate elevation area in Brazil.

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I am an Environmental Technician undergraduate by the National Service for Industrial Learning (SENAI), where I studied the availability of rehabilitating degraded areas to transform them into conservation units of special tourist interest. Currently, I’m studying Biology at Centro Universitário de Maringá (UNICESUMAR). I have a special interest in Ornithology, and I intend to develop my studies focused on bird ethology. Also, out of passion, I’m a troubadour poet, amateur photographer and I collaborate with several citizen-science platforms. In the EPHI project, I’m a field assistant, working in the highest areas of research in the Atlantic Rainforest, allocated at the Itatiaia National Park and RPPN Alto Montana, where I help collecting data in the fiedlwork and preparing them in the laboratory.

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I have an undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences from Universidade Federal do Paraná. Throughout my degree, I worked mainly on projects related to the taxonomy of botanical genera belonging to the Orchidaceae family, also with insects associated with exotic and native forest species and participating in consultancy in the area of botanical identification, floristic and phytosociology, in addition to monitoring in plant systematics. As a course conclusion, I studied the diversity of endemic epiphytic angiosperms from the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, assessing their distribution and conservation status. In the EPHI project, I have been working as a field assistant in the lowland areas, in Picinguaba, São Paulo, being responsible for data collection, installation of cameras, counting and identification of plants and hummingbirds.

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I have an undergraduate degree in Biology from Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín – Colombia (2015), and a master’s degree in Ecology and Conservation from Universidade Federal do Paraná (2019). I am a PhD student in this program. I have a special interest in ornithology and conservation. I worked with bird flocks in the Colombian Amazon and with population ecology of Pyrrhura frontalis (Psittacidae) in the Southern part of Atlantic Forest. Currently, I am focused on learning methods to work with mutualistic networks, specifically with plant-hummingbirds. In addition, I plan to analyze the effects of climate change on patterns of diversity of hummingbirds and their food resources. In the EPHI project, I do different activities related to data collection, and I am responsible for two transects in Picinguaba municipality, São Paulo, and one transect in Paraty municipality, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

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I have a degree in Biological Sciences from Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR). Currently, I am a master’s student in Ecology and Nature Conservation at the same institution working with functional ecology and interactions networks between plant and hummingbird in an elevational gradient in Atlantic Forest. In the project, I work at Parque Estadual Serra do Mar, Cunha – SP.

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I am a Biologist with and undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador (PUCE). Currently, I am a master student in the Ecology and Conservation program at Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR), Brazil. I am interested in conservation of biodiversity, ecology of pollination and interaction networks. At present, my research focuses on the influence of flower density and resource quantity (nectar) in pollination outcomes in a plant-hummingbird community. In the project I work in Cunha municipality, São Paulo, where we gather data from three different transects.

Mater Natura – Institute of Environmental Studies is responsible for the administrative and financial management of the project in Brazil. The institute is a non-profit, environmental, scientific, educational and cultural civil association. Over more than three decades of activity, Mater Natura has carried out 87 projects, sponsored by 45 public and private institutions, national and international, and supported by 158 partners. The institution aims to act for the preservation, conservation, recovery and sustainable management of the environment, landscape heritage and cultural assets and values. It has an organizational structure for the management and inspection of activities, in addition to a multidisciplinary team that designs and executes projects in different areas, develops and participates in public policy actions, working together with a network of partners.

Link:

http://www.maternatura.org.br/

The: Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR) is a public university headquartered in Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil. UFPR was founded in 1912 in Curitiba, capital of the State of Paraná. UFPR ranks as 37th best university in Latin-America and it is among the 651-700 best universities in the world, according to QS World University Rankings. It is placed as the 8th best university in Brazil in the latest “Ranking Universitário Folha (RUF)”, published by the nation’s largest newspaper. It offers over 120 undergraduate degree courses, 50 doctorates, 70 masters and 5 professional masters programs.

Link:

https://www.ufpr.br/portalufpr/

The Laboratório de Interações & Biologia Reprodutiva (LINTER) is interested in the ecology of pollination and dispersal interactions, as well as on studies on plant reproductive biology. The studies include the structure and dynamics of ecological networks and the conservation of ecological interactions.

Link:

https://laboratoriodeinteracoes.wordpress.com/

I have finished my master’s work at the Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR). My project aimed to assess whether trait-matching and the position of plant species and flowers within the interaction network affect plant fitness in the Atlantic Forest. More specifically, I tested the effect of centrality, interaction selectivity and plant and hummingbird trait-matching on plant reproductive outcomes. At the species-level, I found no relationships between centrality or interaction selectivity and plant fitness. However, at the flower-level, I found a significant positive relationship between flower centrality and seed production. Trait-matching was not significantly related to fitness. These findings suggest that the position of individual flowers within the network may have important implications for pollination effectiveness.

I am an Ecuadorian biologist with an undergraduate degree from the University of Azuay (2012). I have just finished my master’s degree in Ecology and Conservation at the Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil. My professional interests are associated with ecology, plant-pollinator networks, pollination ecology and biodiversity conservation. I was coordinator of the EPHI project in Ecuador during 2017, and between 2018 and 2020, I was part of the EPHI project in Brazil. Here, I carried out my master’s research based on temporal niche partitioning, throughout the day, of a hummingbird-plant network in the southeast of the Atlantic Forest. I will soon start looking for doctoral opportunities to continue to understand the world of hummingbirds and plants.

I am doing my master thesis at Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR), Brazil. I am describing niche packing and expansion in plant-hummingbird interactions along a richness gradient. Also, I plan to assess the relationship between the interaction specialization and patterns of niche packing. In order to reach these goals, I am using interactions data provided by the project and also plants’ traits. The hummingbird trait data come from literature. These traits will be used to estimates functional richness and volume to describe the morphovolume (niche expansion) and morphodensity (niche packing).

In my doctoral dissertation, I will use ecological niche modelling to predict the distribution of the different dimensions of biodiversity (taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic) of hummingbirds and their interactions with Atlantic Forest plants in different future climate scenarios. Based on these scenarios, we will analyze changes in the dimensions of diversity in hummingbird communities in the face of climate change (Chapter 1), in order to identify priority areas for conservation. I will also analyze the loss of interaction pairs by combining future distribution models for  hummingbirds and plants (Chapter 2) since this loss has negative effects on ecosystem services. Finally, on a local scale, I will analyze the relationship between the dimensions of the biodiversity of hummingbirds and plants with the metrics of interaction networks (Chapter 3). By combining the results of the three chapters of this thesis, we will be able to better understand the effects of climate change on the interaction networks between hummingbirds and their floral resources.