Population demography of Northern muriquis (Brachyteles hypoxanthus) at the Estação Biológica de Caratinga/Reserva particular do Patrimônio Natural-Felìciano Miguel Abdala, Minas Gerais, Brazil

The 957‐ha forest at the Estação Biológica de Caratinga/Reserva Particular do Patrimônio Natural‐Felìciano Miguel Abdala, in Minas Gerais, Brazil, supports one of the largest known populations of the critically endangered northern muriqui (Brachyteles hypoxanthus). We combine long‐term data on one group that has been monitored since 1982 with new data obtained on the other three groups since 2002 and 2003 to describe the demographic structure of this population, evaluate its potential for future growth, and predict how dispersal and competitive regimes may change in response to current demographic conditions. As of January 2005, the 226 individuals in the population were divided into four mixed‐sex groups with 37–77 members, and an all‐male unit whose eight males maintained transient associations with two of the mixed‐sex groups. Although 51.77% of the population was female, the sex ratio among adults and subadults was female‐biased (0.75), while that among immatures was male‐biased (1.47). Consistent with expectations from mean interbirth intervals, 64.18% of adult females gave birth in 2003 and 2004. However, by January 2005, only 52.31% of adult females were still carrying infants <24 months of age due to unusually high infant mortality. First‐year survivorship among the 25 infants born in the population in 2003 was only 76%, considerably lower than previously documented in the longest‐studied group. High female fecundity is indicative of a healthy population, but the current male bias in births will result in a decline in the population growth rate within two decades, and may increase levels of male reproductive competition and alter dispersal patterns. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2006. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Rhenium(I) and ruthenium(II) complexes with a crown-linked methanofullerene ligand: synthesis, electrochemistry and photophysical characterization.

A cyclopropanation reaction has been used to prepare two methanofullerenes bearing a 2,2'-bipyridine () or pyridine () ligand separated from the fullerene through an oxyethylene macrocyclic spacer. Derivatives and were, in turn, employed to synthesize two fullerene-based ruthenium(ii) and rhenium(i) donor-acceptor dyads whose molecular structure was confirmed by (1)H NMR, (13)C NMR and exact mass determination. The UV-Vis spectrum of the dyads is the superimposition of those of appropriate model systems, indicating that ground-state electronic interactions between the constituent chromophores, in solution, are negligible, in line also with the electrochemical results. The complex voltammetric pattern was characterized by the superimposition of signals attributed to one moiety or another without significant shifts with respect to their models. Furthermore, both species undergo partial chemical degradation in the time scale of cyclic voltammetry upon their multiple reduction. Photophysical properties of and , namely, excited state interactions between the ruthenium(ii) or rhenium(i) complexes and [60]fullerene have been investigated by steady-state and time-resolved UV-Vis-NIR luminescence spectroscopy that was complemented by nanosecond laser flash photolysis in CH(2)Cl(2) solutions. All experimental findings were set into relation with the corresponding reference compounds. More precisely, excitation of the metal complexes in and gives rise to a notable steady-state and time-resolved luminescence quenching of both metal to ligand charge transfer states (i.e., [Ru(bpy)(3)](2+) and [(bpy)Re(CO)(3)(py)](+)). Conclusive evidence about the nature of the photoproducts came from nanosecond laser flash photolysis. In these experiments, only the long-lived and oxygen-sensitive [60]fullerene triplets were detected. Two pathways are envisioned for this [60]fullerene triplet formation. Firstly, intramolecular transduction of the triplet excited state energy evolving from the photoexcited metal complexes. Secondly, intersystem crossing of directly excited [60]fullerene.     

Scholarometer: A Social Framework for Analyzing Impact across Disciplines

The use of quantitative metrics to gauge the impact of scholarly publications, authors, and disciplines is predicated on the availability of reliable usage and annotation data. Citation and download counts are widely available from digital libraries. However, current annotation systems rely on proprietary labels, refer to journals but not articles or authors, and are manually curated. To address these limitations, we propose a social framework based on crowdsourced annotations of scholars, designed to keep up with the rapidly evolving disciplinary and interdisciplinary landscape. We describe a system called Scholarometer, which provides a service to scholars by computing citation-based impact measures. This creates an incentive for users to provide disciplinary annotations of authors, which in turn can be used to compute disciplinary metrics. We first present the system architecture and several heuristics to deal with noisy bibliographic and annotation data. We report on data sharing and interactive visualization services enabled by Scholarometer. Usage statistics, illustrating the data collected and shared through the framework, suggest that the proposed crowdsourcing approach can be successful. Secondly, we illustrate how the disciplinary bibliometric indicators elicited by Scholarometer allow us to implement for the first time a universal impact measure proposed in the literature. Our evaluation suggests that this metric provides an effective means for comparing scholarly impact across disciplinary boundaries.     

Micro-Macro Analysis of Complex Networks

Complex systems have attracted considerable interest because of their wide range of applications, and are often studied via a “classic” approach: study a specific system, find a complex network behind it, and analyze the corresponding properties. This simple methodology has produced a great deal of interesting results, but relies on an often implicit underlying assumption: the level of detail on which the system is observed. However, in many situations, physical or abstract, the level of detail can be one out of many, and might also depend on intrinsic limitations in viewing the data with a different level of abstraction or precision. So, a fundamental question arises: do properties of a network depend on its level of observability, or are they invariant? If there is a dependence, then an apparently correct network modeling could in fact just be a bad approximation of the true behavior of a complex system. In order to answer this question, we propose a novel micro-macro analysis of complex systems that quantitatively describes how the structure of complex networks varies as a function of the detail level. To this extent, we have developed a new telescopic algorithm that abstracts from the local properties of a system and reconstructs the original structure according to a fuzziness level. This way we can study what happens when passing from a fine level of detail (“micro”) to a different scale level (“macro”), and analyze the corresponding behavior in this transition, obtaining a deeper spectrum analysis. The obtained results show that many important properties are not universally invariant with respect to the level of detail, but instead strongly depend on the specific level on which a network is observed. Therefore, caution should be taken in every situation where a complex network is considered, if its context allows for different levels of observability.     

Length–weight relationships for estuarine fishes in South Brazil

The present study reports the length‐weight relationships (LWRs) for 18 estuarine species sampled in Guaratuba Bay, South Brazil. For the majority of these 18 species the LWRs are known from the literature, but these estimates do not consider sexes separately which is done in this contribution. Different fishing gears were used in the samplings (cylindrical nets – 1 mm mesh size, bottom trawls – 250 mm mesh size in the arms and 12 mm mesh size in the bag, beach seine – 5 mm mesh size and hook and line fishery) between September 2007 to April 2014. The specimens were sexed and the LWRs were calculated for each sex separately. There were differences between sexes in growth type, showing the importance of sexing in these studies. We reported for the first time (based on FishBase) the LWRs for two species: Ctenogobius shufeldti and Hypleurochilus fissicornis.     

Genetic diversity and population history of a critically endangered primate, the northern muriqui (Brachyteles hypoxanthus)

Social, ecological, and historical processes affect the genetic structure of primate populations, and therefore have key implications for the conservation of endangered species. The northern muriqui (Brachyteles hypoxanthus) is a critically endangered New World monkey and a flagship species for the conservation of the Atlantic Forest hotspot. Yet, like other neotropical primates, little is known about its population history and the genetic structure of remnant populations. We analyzed the mitochondrial DNA control region of 152 northern muriquis, or 17.6% of the 864 northern muriquis from 8 of the 12 known extant populations and found no evidence of phylogeographic partitions or past population shrinkage/expansion. Bayesian and classic analyses show that this finding may be attributed to the joint contribution of female-biased dispersal, demographic stability, and a relatively large historic population size. Past population stability is consistent with a central Atlantic Forest Pleistocene refuge. In addition, the best scenario supported by an Approximate Bayesian Computation analysis, significant fixation indices (Φ_ST = 0.49, Φ_CT = 0.24), and population-specific haplotypes, coupled with the extirpation of intermediate populations, are indicative of a recent geographic structuring of genetic diversity during the Holocene. Genetic diversity is higher in populations living in larger areas (>2,000 hectares), but it is remarkably low in the species overall (θ = 0.018). Three populations occurring in protected reserves and one fragmented population inhabiting private lands harbor 22 out of 23 haplotypes, most of which are population-exclusive, and therefore represent patchy repositories of the species'' genetic diversity. We suggest that these populations be treated as discrete units for conservation management purposes.     

Thanatology in the northern muriqui (Brachyteles hypoxanthus)

Primates - Primate thanatology, or the study of primate responses to dying and death, has become increasingly relevant in recent years. However, the number of reports remains small and the quality...     

Socio-sexual behavior of female northern muriquis (Brachyteles hypoxanthus)

Female northern muriquis (Brachyteles hypoxanthus) are known to engage in frequent copulations with multiple partners, a pattern that in other primates has been attributed to various functions such as confusing paternity, reducing male aggression, or ensuring fertilization. However, in some female primates, promiscuity is restricted to times when conceptions are unlikely. We investigated whether female northern muriquis might exhibit a similarly mixed strategy by examining their mating, social, and activity patterns during their conception cycles versus other times. Systematic behavioral data were collected during an 18-month period between August 2001 and February 2003 on 13 adult females in a well-studied group at the RPPN-Feliciano Miguel Abdala, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Females mated on an average of 12.5+/-7.9 days during the study period, and spent significantly less time resting and engaging in non-sexual social behaviors, and significantly more time in sexual behaviors on days that they copulated than on days they did not. Three of the eight females for which sufficient data were available copulated significantly more often with their spatially closest non-kin associates, and four of five females that could be analyzed copulated significantly more often with their most frequent non-kin embrace partners. Comparisons between conception and non-conception periods revealed no differences in female activity budgets or in either the number of copulations or the number of different mating partners per female. Our results suggest that some females mate preferentially with close associates and social partners, but there is no indication that females alter their behavior during the cycles in which they conceive.