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...

Background Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a widely used anesthetic; however, its potential to compromise genomic stability by disrupting vitamin B12 and folate metabolism remains a critical concern in clinical molecular biology. Since N2O can oxidize cobalamin, it may theoretically impair the methionine synthase pathway, leading to DNA damage. Thus, this study aimed to evaluate the toxicogenetic impact—DNA damage and gene expression—a...

Saliva plays a crucial role in oral defense across mammals by combining host-derived antimicrobial factors with antagonistic indigenous microbiota. Understanding the composition of the oral lactic microbiota in wild canids may provide valuable insights into microbial ecology and animal health. In this study, Lactobacillus and Enterococcus spp. isolated from the saliva of South American bush dogs ( Speothos venaticus ) and mane...

Low biochar rates (5 Mg ha −1 ) increased bacterial richness and diversity in degraded soil. Biochar origin controlled microbial assembly and niche specialization patterns. Sewage-sludge biochar favored stress-tolerant and metal-adapted bacterial taxa. Cashew bagasse biochar enhanced nitrogen cycling and chemoheterotrophic functions. Network complexity peaked at intermediate biochar doses and declined at high rates. Biochar ha...

While bats are known to harbor various viruses and bacteria, their role as hosts for hemoparasites has not been extensively studied. This research investigated the presence of ectoparasites and vector-borne pathogens—including Anaplasmataceae agents, hemoplasmas, apicomplexans, and kinetoplastids—in 74 Phyllostomidae bats sampled from an urban forest fragment in southeastern Brazil. Overall, 31.1% of the bats were infested wit...

This paper presents a framework for automatically generating interpretable LoD2 indoor 3D models from unstructured point clouds. The method treats indoor modeling as a cartographic generalization problem, introducing a 3D corpus of geospatial feature classes that represents indoor environments as parsimonious compositions of geometric primitives organized by spatial grammar and compatible with IndoorGML. A sparse convolutional...

Elephants were a major driver of tree stem mortality in Africa, but their impacts are now spatially constrained and they no longer topple trees across the continent. Thus, most African landscapes lack a key ecological agent that helped maintain diversity and functioning. Even ecologists living in Africa fail to anticipate the rampant destruction of trees that can occur when elephants live in and move through landscapes. If we...

The pygmy ( Kogia breviceps ) and dwarf ( Kogia sima ) sperm whales are cryptic cetaceans characterized by inconspicuous surfacing behavior, small group sizes, and deep‐diving habits, making visual detection particularly challenging. Here, we present the first broad‐scale passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) assessment of Kogia spp. occurrence along the Brazilian coast, spanning both the Equatorial Atlantic Ocean (EAO) and Southw...

Lionfish ( Pterois spp.) are hypothesized to negatively influence cryptobenthic reef fish assemblages through predation. We evaluated these potential effects on Caribbean reefs in Costa Rica and tropical reefs in Brazil. Brazil provided a reference condition for cryptobenthic assemblages prior to lionfish invasion, while the Costa Rica sites enabled comparisons between reefs inside marine protected areas (MPAs), where lionfish...