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The article announces the recipients of the 2023 AOS Harry R. Painton Award and Honorable Mentions. Natália Stefanini Da Silveira is awarded the Harry R. Painton Award for her paper on the impact of climate change on migratory thrushes in South America. Rachael W. Herman receives an Honorable Mention for her research on Gentoo Penguins, and Sarah P. Saunders is also recognized for her work on avian conservation. The article provides brief biographical information about each recipient and highlights the significance of their research. [Extracted from the article]

Amazonia is one of the world's most vulnerable regions to climate change but few studies pinpointing priority areas for local adaptation programmes exist. This paper aims to identify socio-climatic hotspots among the 515 municipalities that compose the Brazilian Amazon by using a three-step process. First, we identified the regional social hotspots, that is, municipalities that have currently low adaptive capacity, by calculating a composite infrastructure index based on the assessment of both current green and socioeconomic infrastructures. Second, we used a Regional Climate Change Index to identify the climate change hotspots, that is, those municipalities that have a high likelihood to experience future climate change risks. Third, we evaluated the geographic coincidence of social and climate change hotspots to identify the socio-climatic hotspots. We found that 117 municipalities are regional social hotspots and that 60 municipalities are regional climate change hotspots. Forty-six municipalities are considered as socio-climatic hotspots because they have very low to low composite infrastructure indices and very high climate risk indices. Local institutional capacity to integrate and execute national-level policies that enhance local adaptive capacity is a major constraint across the region. To face the challenges associated with climate change, municipalities in the Brazilian Amazon should embrace a more sustainable development model. Sustainable development, in the context of the Brazilian Amazon, implies conservation of the existing green infrastructure through the expansion of protected areas and indigenous lands, restoration of green infrastructure in areas of deficit, and substantial investments in urban socioeconomic infrastructures to foster a knowledge-based economy. Although local sustainable development and adaptation plans are essential across the entire region, the 46 municipalities identified in this study as regional socio-climatic hotspots could be prioritized for action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Target 6 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity states that by 2020 at least 75% of production lands in each sector will be managed sustainably, consistent with the conservation of plant diversity. Target 11 stipulates that by 2020 no species of the wild flora will be threatened by international trade. Both targets, therefore, are related to production, consumption and trade, which must be sustainable if the targets are to be achieved. Here we examine Brazil's progress in achieving these two targets. We focus on the three economic sectors of agriculture, cattle raising and forestry, which are historically responsible for most of the native-ecosystem conversion in the country and in South America. Brazil has set a number of innovative policies for moving these sectors towards a sustainable path. However, the country needs to put these policies into action to generate tangible results. The results of all efforts so far are mixed. Whereas ecosystem conversion due to the expansion of rural production and the volume of illegal international logging trade have been reduced significantly, the absolute number of hectares of native ecosystems converted into cropland, pastureland or planted forests remains high, especially in Amazonia and the Cerrado. In addition, the number of species threatened by illegal timber exploration remains high mainly in Amazonia and the Atlantic forest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an introduction to academic papers on biological diversity conservation challenges and opportunities in Brazil, published in the June 2005 issue of the scholarly periodical "Conservation Biology". History, context, and status of conservation; Protected areas; Number of species; State of knowledge, threats, conservation status, and habitat assessment for plants.

Background: Microendemic species are species with very small geographic distributions (ranges). Their presence delimitates areas with microendemic species (AMs), denoting a spatial unit comprising at least one population of at least one microendemic species. AMs are assumed to be distributed distinctively and associated with specific ecological, historical, and anthropogenic attributes. However, the level of influence of these factors remains unclear. Thus, we studied the distribution patterns of microendemic species within the Brazilian Atlantic Forest to (a) identify the region's AMs; (b) evaluate whether ecological (latitude, altitude, distance from the coastline), historical (climate stability), and anthropogenic (ecological integrity) attributes distinguish AMs from non-AMs; and (c) assess the conservation status of the Atlantic Forest's AMs., Methods: We mapped the ranges of 1,362 microendemic species of angiosperms, freshwater fishes, and terrestrial vertebrates (snakes, passerine birds, and small mammals) to identify the region's AMs. Further, spatial autoregressive logit regression models were used to evaluate whether latitude, altitude, distance from the coastline, Climate Stability Index, and ecological integrity can be used to discern AMs from non-AMs. Moreover, the AMs' conservation status was assessed by evaluating the region's ecological integrity and conservation efforts (measured as the proportion of AMs in protected areas)., Results: We identified 261 AMs for angiosperm, 205 AMs for freshwater fishes, and 102 AMs for terrestrial vertebrates in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, totaling 474 AMs covering 23.8% of the region. The Brazilian Atlantic Forest is a large and complex biogeographic mosaic where AMs represent islands or archipelagoes surrounded by transition areas with no microendemic species. All local attributes help to distinguish AMs from non-AMs, but their impacts vary across taxonomic groups. Around 69% of AMs have low ecological integrity and poor conservation efforts, indicating that most microendemic species are under threat. This study provides insights into the biogeography of one of the most important global biodiversity hotspots, creating a foundation for comparative studies using other tropical forest regions., Competing Interests: José Maria Cardoso da Silva is an Academic Editor for PeerJ., (© 2024 Araujo et al.)

In a world where changes in land cover and climate happen faster than ever due to the expansion of human activities, narrowly distributed species are predicted to be the first to go extinct. Studies projecting species extinction in tropical regions consider either habitat loss or climate change as drivers of biodiversity loss but rarely evaluate them together. Here, the contribution of these two factors to the extinction risk of narrowly distributed species (with ranges smaller than 10,000 km 2 ) of seed plants endemic to a fifth-order watershed in Brazil (microendemics) is assessed. We estimated the Regional Climate Change Index (RCCI) of these watersheds (areas with microendemics) and projected three scenarios of land use up to the year 2100 based on the average annual rates of habitat loss in these watersheds from 2000 to 2014. These scenarios correspond to immediate conservation action (scenario 1), long-term conservation action (scenario 2), and no conservation action (scenario 3). In each scenario, areas with microendemics were classified into four classes: (1) areas with low risk, (2) areas threatened by habitat loss, (3) areas threatened by climate change, and (4) areas threatened by climate change and habitat loss. We found 2,354 microendemic species of seed plants in 776 areas that altogether cover 17.5% of Brazil. Almost 70% (1,597) of these species are projected to be under high extinction risk by the end of the century due to habitat loss, climate change, or both, assuming that these areas will not lose habitat in the future due to land use. However, if habitat loss in these areas continues at the prevailing annual rates, the number of threatened species is projected to increase to more than 85% (2,054). The importance of climate change and habitat loss as drivers of species extinction varies across phytogeographic domains, and this variation requires the adoption of retrospective and prospective conservation strategies that are context specific. We suggest that tropical countries, such as Brazil, should integrate biodiversity conservation and climate change policies (both mitigation and adaptation) to achieve win-win social and environmental gains while halting species extinction., Competing Interests: José Maria Cardoso da Silva is an Academic Editor for PeerJ.