Waterbirds have an important ecological function as vectors of plant dispersal between different wetlands. In the Neotropical region, there is very limited information about this dispersal. In southern Brazil, seed dispersal by endozoochory was studied by five waterfowl, including Brazilian teal, yellow-billed teal, ringed teal, coscoroba swan, and whitefaced whistling-duck. Over 2000 diaspores were recovered from 40 different plants, including seeds of 37 angiosperms, and diaspores of...

Habitat destruction and overexploitation are the main threats to biodiversity and where they co?occur, their combined impact is often larger than their individual one. Yet, detailed knowledge of the spatial footprints of these threats is lacking, including where they overlap and how they change over time. These knowledge gaps are real barriers for effective conservation planning. Here, a novel approach was developed to reconstruct the individual and combined footprints of both threats over time.

Details of how, why and in what conditions large felids make scrapes is unknown. Here, the general hypothesis about the use of scrapes for marking proposals, as well as to communicate with other individuals to signalize particular points or areas of interest were examined by studying scrape-marking behaviour of jaguars and pumas. Scrapes were surveyed during dry season in five study areas from Mexico (El Edén and San Ignacio), Belize (Cockscomb) and Brazil (Angatuba and Serra das Almas),...