Unlocking the Treasure of Biodiversity: Exploring genes and museum collections to conserve diversity in the Atlantic Forest and promote citizen science
Science / Life Sciences
Today we know that climatic factors and variations in relief can promote species diversity in nature. But we still know little about the role of interactions between plants and animals in setting up and regulating patterns of plant diversity. Here I will assess how frugivores’ decisions about, for example, eating a small or large fruit, with many or few seeds, yellow or red, among other choices, impact species diversification rates. Our study model is the Myrtaceae family, which houses many of the species we see in backyards such as guava, jabuticaba, pitanga, uvaia, among others. The generated results will be applied to conserve the Atlantic Forest and promote the dissemination of knowledge about biodiversity, after all it is easier to preserve what we know than what we do not know.
