EFEITOS ANTRÓPICOS E AMBIENTAIS PARA O DECLÍNIO POPULACIONAL DOS ANUROS NO MUNDO

Abstract

Anurans have suffered a decline in their populations worldwide, this phenomenon was initially detected in the early nineties, since then a lot of research has been done on the subject. This research shows that a diverse range of stressors (pesticides, climate change, landscape changes, among others) are linked to declining anuran populations. In this sense, this work sought to better understand the population decline causes, and for this purpose surveys were carried out on data not only on the most studied stressors, the species that are receiving the most research focus, and which countries are most investing in research for their own purposes to the group. We also analyzed the effects of joint stressors (interactive effects) and their impacts on anurans. The methodology for searching this information was carried out through scienciometric surveys, using three distinct databases (Web of Science, Scopus and Pubmed). In these databases we used the keywords “frog, decline” as the article selection criterion. From then, data such as publication year, first author nationality, stressors used, species studied were compiled. The results demonstrate that the stressors most linked to the amphibians decline is the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (BD), followed by anthropogenic effects such as pesticide applications and landscape changes. When we analyze the countries that publish the most on the subject, we notice that the United States leads the rank, a phenomenon that also explains the fact that the most studied species occur in the North American territory. Regarding the interactive effects, it was found that in most cases, two or more stressors have a synergistic relationship with each other, where one will potentiate the effect of the other, while the damage caused by the set of stressors will be greater than the sum of the individual effects. Thus, this work allowed us to conclude that amphibian populations are in population decline and that anthropic actions have a 3 great impact on anuran populations. In addition, it can be found that research is concentrated in a few research centers (such as the US), and unfortunately does not correspond to countries with greater biodiversity. Despite the large amount of data analyzed, this work has shown that there are still large knowledge gaps on the subject, and thus more similar work is encouraged to better direct scientific research, especially for studies involving conservation policy making.