Desafios para a conservação de espécies ameaçadas no nordeste brasileiro

Abstract

Brazil has extreme relevance as the country with the highest biodiversity in the world. It is estimated that the Brazilian territory presents 46,223 species in its flora, of which 6,046 were assessed for extinction risk and 2,953 were classified as threatened, but only 332 have action plans. This work aims to verify in which Units of Conservation eight endangered species occurring in the Northeast can be reintroduced. In addition, to verify if the size of the conservation units interferes in the strategies of conservation of these species. The eight endangered species were selected from the available SpeciesLink data and are: Manilkara dardanoi, Aechmea muricata, Eschweilera alvimii, Cryptanthus zonatus, Jacaranda rugosa, Griffinia gardneriana, Solanum jabrense and Aechmea werdermannii. The study area established was the Brazilian Northeast, which is composed mainly of the Atlantic Forest and Caatinga biomes. Data were collected from herbariums on the SpeciesLink database. Subsequently, to evaluate the potential distribution, ecological niche modeling was performed using the R statistical environment, in which two Bioclim and MaxEnt algorithms were selected, 19 bioclimatic variables. The potential distribution data of the species were used to verify the conservation units in which the species could be reintroduced, the area of occupancy (AOO) and extent of occurrence (EOO). When comparing the models generated by the algorithms, it was verified that the potential distribution of the Caatinga species is higher than those of the Atlantic Forest. This fact can be proven by the analysis of Occurrence Extension and Area of Occupancy. In the comparison of the number of conservation units for each species of the biomes, an inversion of the pattern that occurred for AOO and EOO was observed, that is, Atlantic Forest species presented a greater number of UC's than those of Caatinga. The best strategy to guarantee the protection of these species would be the establishment of ecological corridors in the Atlantic Forest, and the implementation of a greater number of UC's in the Caatinga, even if smaller.