Rays of the family Rhinopteridae Jordan & Evermann, 1896 are highly migratory and widely distributed in warm tropical and temperate waters. Along the Brazilian coast, the presence of two species has been recorded: Rhinoptera bonasus Mitchill, 1815 and Rhinoptera brasiliensis Müller, 1836. These stingrays are commonly caught as bycatch in trawl fisheries, however, the two species lack distinctive external morphological features...

Species of the genus Beauveria are widely used as biological control agents due to their ability to infect and kill a broad range of arthropod pests. Despite their agricultural importance, the genomic diversity underlying virulence and secondary metabolism across the genus remains uncharacterized. In this study, we performed a comprehensive phylogenomic and biosynthetic gene cluster (BGC) analysis of 322 high-quality Beauveria...

The Paraguayan hairy dwarf porcupine ( Coendou spinosus , Cuvier, 1823) is a rodent species (Rodentia, Erethizontidae) widely distributed in the Brazilian Atlantic forest. However, little is known about their viral diversity. In this study, we aimed to evaluate, using high-throughput sequencing (HTS), the virome of the feces of seven healthy adult free-living porcupines from Silva Jardim, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Total viral nu...

Flies are important vectors of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in food production, but their role in meat processing environments remains poorly characterized. This study isolated Enterobacteriaceae and Staphylococcaceae (including Mammaliicoccus sciuri ) from flies collected in bovine and swine slaughterhouses and meat processing industries. Phenotypic AMR was assessed, and the presence of selected antimicrobial resistance and...

The present study aimed to comprehensively characterize the cancer-associated virome in patients with gastric cancer. A total of 452 samples were analyzed, including 226 tumor tissues and 202 peritumoral tissues from patients undergoing surgical resection, alongside 24 normal gastric mucosa samples obtained via endoscopy from individuals without cancer. RNA was extracted, libraries were prepared, and paired-end sequencing was...

Background Pastures are the main feed source for cattle in Brazil, and pasture-based production systems require frequent measurements and monitoring of forage productivity and quality to optimize animal performance. In this context, this study aimed to develop and evaluate machine learning models for the quantitative estimation of dry matter (DM), crude protein (CP), and neutral detergent fiber (NDF) in tropical pastures using...

Aim We investigate the distribution of dispersal modes — endozoochory (via animal ingestion), synzoochory (via animal seed accumulation) and anemochory (via wind)—and seed mass of woody plants across Brazilian ecosystems, testing whether their relative abundance in local plant communities could be predicted by climate, edaphic factors and dispersal agents (e.g., the main vectors moving seeds). We expected climate to be the mai...

Climate change is rapidly reshaping species distributions and threatening ecosystem services, yet continent-wide forecasts for Neotropical hoverflies are virtually absent. Here, we present the first large-scale ecological niche modeling assessment for Dioprosopa clavata (Fabricius, 1794), a key syrphid with dual ecological roles in pollination and aphid control. Using 1,214 curated occurrences and an ensemble of MaxEnt, DOMAIN...