Biodiversity components, and their metabolic characters, of Brazilian Islands: an integrated approach

Abstract

Islands represent about 5% of the Erath’s land cover. With a very particular biodiversity, islands are considered true microcosms of the continents. The islands’ natural environment very often present a variety of endemic species, which are particularly vulnerable. Therefore, the importance of biodiversity conservation of biological species present on islands is extreme. The marine biodiversity of the South Atlantic west coast, where Brazil is located, it is still essentially unknown. The anthropogenic impacts observed in the Brazilian coastal region are of increasing intensity. Coastal and oceanic Brazilian islands have submerged marine environments somewhat better preserved that the coastline ones. Taking into account the diversity of species estimated for such islands, the study of its biodiversity is most necessary and should be conducted jointly with bioprospecting activities. This project aims to answer four questions: 1. Macro-organics of different biological group (sponges, ascidians, cnidarians, bryozoans and mollusks) found in different islands of Brazil exhibit a distinct pattern of occurrence or distribution than at the coastline? 2. Micro-organisms associated with invertebrates and with plant islands exhibit an occurrence of species different from that observed in coastal environments? 3. Among the macro- and micro-organisms that will be chemically, biochemically and biotechnologically investigated, are their secondary metabolites and enzimes characteristically unique of organisms found on islands and archipelagos, due to relative geographic isolation of the species present in these environments, or have biogenetic relationships and/or occurrences or similar biochemical characters of related species found on the continent? 4. The frequency of the occurrence of bioactive substances in organisms from islands is higher than in organisms from the coasts? In order to answer such questions, fauna surveys associated with studies of biodiversity, taxonomy, phylogeography, bioprospecting, microbiology and metagenomic analyses will be performed. Particular emphasis will be applied to the survey and description of invertebrate species to be found in sites still poorly explored. Such strategy aims: the isolation of “exotic” microbial strains using different approaches for growth in culture media; the isolation of novel bioactive metabolites using dereplication tools and refined analyses of chemical profiles (by UPLC-UV-MS/MS); the investigation of specific cases of micr-organism/macro-organism interactions that may be related to metabolism expression of one or both parties, using metagenomic techniques associated with metabolomics analyses of specific biological groups. (AU)