Temporary ponds of Uruguay and the invertebrates that inhabit them represent relatively unexplored ecosystems, without clear references in relation to diversity levels they host. In present work we report presence 216 species morphospecies a total estimate richness between 263 373 species, for 18 temporary Castillos Lagoon Basin, department Rocha, Uruguay. This high would allow maintaining stab...

BACKGROUND Yeast-like fungi inhabit soils throughout all climatic zones in a great abundance. While recent estimations predicted a plethora of prokaryotic taxa in one gram of soil, similar data are lacking for fungi, especially yeasts. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We assessed the diversity of soil yeasts in different forests of central Germany using cultivation-based techniques with subsequ...

For more than a century, microbiologists have sought to determine the species richness of bacteria in soil, but the extreme complexity and unknown structure of soil microbial communities have obscured the answer. We developed a statistical model that makes the problem of estimating richness statistically accessible by evaluating the characteristics of samples drawn from simulated communities wi...

Anthropogenic changes in the landscape result in an environmental mosaic with serious consequences for biodiversity. The aim of the present study was to assess the effects of the anthropogenic changes on Asteraceae richness and abundance, and to evaluate the consequences for the richness of Tephritidae assemblages in five sampling sites, with three sampled habitats in each: cerrado (Brazilian s...

Vascular epiphytes are important components of biological diversity in tropical forests. We measured the species richness and abundance of vascular epiphytes along four vertical crown zones and five horizontal orientations on 376 trees, as well as the diameter at breast height (DBH) of host trees in tropical cloud forests in Bawangling, Hainan, China. The relationship between vascular epiphyte ...

Healthy ecosystems include many species (high richness) with similar abundances (high evenness). Thus, both aspects of biodiversity are worthy of conservation. Simultaneously conserving richness and evenness might be difficult, however, if, for example, the restoration of previously absent species to low densities brings a cost in reduced evenness. Using meta-analysis, we searched for benefits ...

Theoretical and empirical studies demonstrate that the total amount of forest and the size and connectivity of fragments have nonlinear effects on species survival. We tested how habitat amount and configuration affect understory bird species richness and abundance. We used mist nets (almost 34,000 net hours) to sample birds in 53 Atlantic Forest fragments in southeastern Brazil. Fragments were...