Towards Greater Knowledge of the Brazilian Semi-arid Biodiversity

Luciano Paganucci de Queiroz, Alessandro Rapini & Ana Maria Giulietti (Editors)

Facing the endangered situation of drylands, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 2006 the International Year of Deserts and Desertification, which is extended to the sub-humid lands. This book was then a demand of MCT to make research projects on the Brazilian Semi-arid biodiversity public at COP-8 meeting. We face the challenge to gather information of different research groups in the Northeast Brazil in a period of one month. The result is this book which presents a brief summary of ongoing projects dealing with different aspects of Semi-arid biodiversity.

Brazil holds the largest biodiversity on the planet, accounting for around 13% of total world biota. Recent works estimate a known Brazilian biota of 170,000 to 210,000 species. These estimates increase to 1.8 to 2.4 million species if we take undiscovered species into consideration. Given that the Neotropics is the least-studied major region of the world, we feel these figures realistic or even underestimated. If these figures are compared with the paucity of trained taxonomists, we can realize the huge task we have just to take a glimpse of our biodiversity.

Brazilian drylands are concentrated in the semi-arid region of NE Brazil. It presents the most diverse landscape in Brazil, both in geomorphological features and vegetation types. This environmental diversity must reflect in increasing biodiversity, complicated taxonomy and complex biogeographical patterns occurring in a relatively small scale. This situation of landscapes, vegetations and biodiversity happening in mosaics are a huge challenge not only for taxonomic and ecological studies but, especially, for conservation purposes. More recently, Brazilian government put forward some initiatives in order to better preserve Caatinga biodiversity. However, these strategies suffer with lack of confident taxonomic data. In the Semi-arid, taxonomic background is worse than that found in other Brazilian regions, even in the Northeast region, which have most teaching and research institutes in the coast. Empirical data have shown that efficiency to establish protect areas increases when species lists for each candidate area are available and that advantage of taxonomic surveys long surpass their costs.

This book will present, along 27 chapters, a small portion of ongoing initiatives aiming to provide data about Brazilian Semi-arid biodiversity. A general view of the physical and biotic features of the Semi-arid can be found in the introductory section ‘To Set the Scene’.

In the first section, two network initiatives are presented: IMSEAR (Chapter 1) and PPBio/Semi-árido (Chapter 2), both funding by MCT. The former presents some results after four years of project; whereas the latter presents the component structure and its main goals.

The second section contains three chapters about biological collections in the semi-arid region. Chapter 3 presents a broad coverage of the herbaria in NE Brazil and gives a good idea of their history, main collections and problems. Chapter 4 deals of culture collections of microorganisms which are assuming strategic position in biotechnology development. An initiative of repatriation of historical collection data from a herbarium in Europe (that of the RBG-Kew) to herbaria in NE Brazil is presented in Chapter 5. This highlight the value of historical collections, mostly in the largest European herbaria, for taxonomic works carried out in the megadiverse countries, mostly in the tropics, and shows the need to establish partnerships between Brazilian and international agencies. Unfortunately, we could not gather information about zoological collections.

The third section presents the current situation of inventories of different groups and areas in the Semi-arid. Although it is not an extensive coverage, it gives us a picture of the ongoing inventories. For the flowering plants, it is introduced a general view of this large group in the main vegetation types in the Semi-arid (Chapter 6) besides floristic works in the States of Bahia (Chapter 7) and Paraíba (Chapter 8), and in special environments that hold particular floras and ecological processes, such as the ‘campos rupestres’ in the uplands of the Chapada Diamantina (Chapter 9), inselbergs (Chapter 10) and water bodies (Chapter 11) embedded in the Semi-arid. This section also presents projects dealing with taxonomic surveys of two families of flowering plants: Polygonaceae (Chapters 12) and Rhamnaceae (Chapters 13).

Current situation on the knowledge of the fungi in the Semi-arid is presented in the Chapter 14. Data about biodiversity of animals were gathered for a few groups. A general situation of biodiversity of insects in the Semi-arid is presented in Chapter 15, followed by treatments of two megadiverse orders, Diptera (the flies; Chapter 16) and Coleoptera (the beetles; Chapter 17). Data on vertebrates are presented for fishes (Chapters 18) and birds (Chapters 19). Data about fishes highlight the ongoing inventories and the risks of alien species introduction for local ichthyofauna inhabiting isolated basins. The chapter about birds brings the sad report of a recent extinction of the last natural population of the little blue macaw, a species known only for the caatinga of northern Bahia .

Study cases about traditional uses of animals of the Semi-arid as source of food and for folk medicine by Pankararé Indians and local people are provided in Chapter 20.

The fourth section presents studies on molecular plant systematics being carried out in the Semi-arid. Chapter 21 brings information about projects on phylogenetic studies in different groups of plants and about the ‘DNA-bank’, which holds samples of more than 1,000 species. This is certainly the largest DNA bank in Brazil. It is a valuable record of genetic diversity of plants in the Semi-arid and an outstanding source for studies on plant systematics using modern approaches. Chapter 22 presents the goals of a project intending to produce short diagnostic sequences of DNA that act as barcodings for species prompt identification. If successful, this project will provide researchers with accurate identifications of land plants, particularly those of the Caatinga, most of which lack leaves or flowers during the long dry season and usually rise difficult to confident identification.

The fifth section presents some of the graduate programmes in Northeast Brazil that deal with different aspects of Semi-arid biodiversity: Botany at UEFS (Chapter 23), Plant Biology at UFPE (Chapter 24), Biology of Fungi at UFPE (Chapter 25) and Biotechnology at UEFS, FIOCRUZ and UFBA (Chapter 26). Unfortunately, the short schedule to prepare this book did not allow us to gather extensive information from all graduate courses. Our deep apologies for the noteworthy absences of the graduate programmes at UFBA, UFC, UFPB e UFRPE.

The last section presents a project that combines techniques of satellite image analysis with field observations in order to prepare maps of natural remnants of vegetation and land use in the Caatingas (Chapter 27).

We thank authors for prompt contribution and hope this book provides useful information about ongoing researches on the Semi-arid biodiversity carried out in the Northeast Brazil. Most of the sound results presented here were obtained in the last ten years following a more regular funding for taxonomic and ecological studies. This highlights how a significant seed money and continuing funding dramatically improve the regional background for biological research.

Luciano Paganucci de Queiroz
Alessandro Rapini
Ana Maria Giulietti