Environmental DNA applied to monitoring and conservation studies of anurans in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest

Abstract

Brazil has the highest amphibian diversity in the world, with over 1000 described species. About half of this species are distributed in the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest. However, this biome has less than 16% of its original cover. Amphibians are highly sensitive to environmental degradation, facing serious problems of population declines, local extinctions or even species extinctions. In Brazil, 40 amphibian species are listed in some level of threat. However, many species are still poorly studied or completely unknown and their conservation status require more investigations. The analysis of DNA traces in environmental samples allows assessing the entire diversity of species in a single experiment. It is a non-invasive and powerful approach, providing effective results in a short period of time, and helps overcome many of the challenges of traditional survey methods for species detection. In the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest, some anuran species associated to the leaf litter or bromeliads are no longer registered, and most of them are not listed in some level of threaten in the IUCN red list, mainly due to the lack of information about their biological activities or geographical distributions. This project aims to contribute to the development of environmental DNA sample analyses in order to search for disappeared amphibian species associated to the leaf litter or bromeliads in the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest, improving the knowledge of their geographical distributions and conservation status. (AU)