The project tries to understand the impact of human societies and the anthropogenic and climatic legacies on biodiversity and the evolution of Amazonian landscapes over the past millennia. Utilizing the infrastructure of archaeological excavations in Sambaquis, an interdisciplinary approach will be developed to analyze plants, molluscs, vertebrate fauna, and sediments. The biodiversity around Sambaquis will be compared with data from other areas of the Amazon, seeking evidence of climate changes focused on precipitation to distinguish the effects of natural and human pressures on the landscape.

Why are there so many plant species in tropical regions? This question has driven the work of naturalists such as Alexander von Humboldt and Charles Darwin for centuries, but we still know relatively little about the processes that led to the diversity patterns we observe today.

This project aims to generate ecological information for hundreds of plant species in Brazil, and to refine mathematical models and ecological theories about biodiversity. We will then integrate these new ecological models and data with state-of-the-art bioinformatics and plant genetics tools to test hypotheses about the processes of diversification and maintenance of biodiversity in threatened ecosystems, such as the rupestrian fields of Chapada da Diamantina and the inselbergs (or sugar loaves) of southeastern Brazil.