The Atlantic Coastal Forest of eastern Brazil is one of the most diverse habitats in the world, and has been named a biodiversity hot-spot with highest priority for conservation. Zamudio's collaborative research in Brazil addresses the origins and maintenance of diversity in this habitat. Data from surveys of mainland and island frog communities will be used to address hypotheses about the evolution, diversity, conservation genetics, and biogeography of coastal and island populations in this region. In addition, the research team will assay all species for Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, a chytrid pathogen recently discovered in Brazil that may be a threat to anurans in South America. The proposed biotic survey will estimate composition of multiple Atlantic Coastal Forest sites, contributing to knowledge of diversity, species distributions, and modes of diversification, and our understanding of how fragmentation affects community structure and population connectivity. Additionally, this work will provide baseline data for an emergent infectious disease that has been implicated in amphibian declines. Finally, this project increases international scientific collaborations, including training of US graduate students in tropical biology and Brazilian students in the application of molecular techniques in systematics and population genetics. Partial funding for this project was provided by the Office of International Science and Engineering at NSF.
Research activities during the tenure of this grant focused on: i) collecting efforts at coastal populations and island populations of frogs in Southeastern Brazil, ii) documenting and describing new species, iii) genotyping microsatellites for three of our focal taxa and genotyping island and coastal samples for those two species, iv) collecting data from nuclear and mtDNA markers for analysis of phylogeography and island biogeography to elucidate the history of Atlantic Coastal forest biodiversity. Over the four years of this grant we completed surveys and made targeted collections at our coastal and island sites. Most of our effort centered on shoutheastern ACF, but we also surveyed three sites in Espírito Santo (northern ACF) and multiple sites in the southern states of Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul. Collections benefited significantly from participation by students and post-docs in the laboratory of Célio Haddad, who developed research questions and collections in Brasil, and performed molecular work at Cornell. All specimens collected during the tenure of this grant have been accessioned in the Coleção de Anuros, UNESP, Rio Claro, SP, Brazil. We also made excellent progress on the sampling for the amphibian pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd). We determined the distribution, prevalence and disease load of Bd in 10-12 species in three different communities along an altitudinal gradient in São Paulo state. We used real time PCR to quantify zoospore loads in the field-collected samples. This focused study allowed us to examine some of the environmental factors affecting disease dynamics in frog communities of this biodiversity hotspot, and complements the more general survey of Bd throughout Atlantic Coastal Forest. Finally, our work in Brazil has facilitated collaborations among Brazilian and US researchers. Teaching and mentoring of Brazilian and US undergraduates, graduates, and post-doctoral associates was a great success of this grant. The interest in Brazil in applying molecular techniques to questions of population biology and conservation of Atlantic Coastal Forest is high. Here in the US, five undergraduates, one graduate, and two post-doctoral fellows benefited significantly from participation in activities related to this grant.
