Papers by Antonio M Saraiva
In carbon dioxide enriched environment the vegetal species tend to intensify the photosynthesis p... more In carbon dioxide enriched environment the vegetal species tend to intensify the photosynthesis process and consequently they acquire biomass more quickly. Currently there is a trend to use CO2 injection to speed up the production of vegetal species. With Open-Top Chambers (OTCs) it is possible to create a controlled atmosphere and quantitatively evaluate the effects of the CO2 enrichment on the plants. In the modeling technique called System Identification a mathematical model that describes the dynamics of a process can be obtained from data that relates input and output of this system. This article describes the application of System Identification to model the carbon dioxide concentration within an OTC as a function of the signal applied to the gas injection valve.
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Ecological Modelling, 2012
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Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, 2007
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Science (New York, N.Y.), Jan 22, 2016
Ecological intensification, or the improvement of crop yield through enhancement of biodiversity,... more Ecological intensification, or the improvement of crop yield through enhancement of biodiversity, may be a sustainable pathway toward greater food supplies. Such sustainable increases may be especially important for the 2 billion people reliant on small farms, many of which are undernourished, yet we know little about the efficacy of this approach. Using a coordinated protocol across regions and crops, we quantify to what degree enhancing pollinator density and richness can improve yields on 344 fields from 33 pollinator-dependent crop systems in small and large farms from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. For fields less than 2 hectares, we found that yield gaps could be closed by a median of 24% through higher flower-visitor density. For larger fields, such benefits only occurred at high flower-visitor richness. Worldwide, our study demonstrates that ecological intensification can create synchronous biodiversity and yield outcomes.
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PloS one, 2015
Supergeneralists, defined as species that interact with multiple groups of species in ecological ... more Supergeneralists, defined as species that interact with multiple groups of species in ecological networks, can act as important connectors of otherwise disconnected species subsets. In Brazil, there are two supergeneralist bees: the honeybee Apis mellifera, a non-native species, and Trigona spinipes, a native stingless bee. We compared the role of both species and the effect of geographic and local factors on networks by addressing three questions: 1) Do both species have similar abundance and interaction patterns (degree and strength) in plant-bee networks? 2) Are both species equally influential to the network structure (nestedness, connectance, and plant and bee niche overlap)? 3) How are these species affected by geographic (altitude, temperature, precipitation) and local (natural vs. disturbed habitat) factors? We analyzed 21 plant-bee weighted interaction networks, encompassing most of the main biomes in Brazil. We found no significant difference between both species in abunda...
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A demanda por sistemas de informações para Agricultura de Precisão (AP) tem sido crescente nos úl... more A demanda por sistemas de informações para Agricultura de Precisão (AP) tem sido crescente nos últimos anos, especialmente sistemas que manipulam informações espaciais e temporais baseados na Web. Normalmente as análises dos dados coletados em campo ...
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ABSTRACT
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This paper presents an information system on stingless bees (Meliponini) of Brazil. Due to their ... more This paper presents an information system on stingless bees (Meliponini) of Brazil. Due to their environmental importance, immediate attention is necessary to increase the knowledge about their biological role, particularly in pollination, conservation and their breeding and preservation. An information system has been developed to organize data and produce knowledge. A database is a central part of this system, storing data collected automatically by data loggers and by a weather station in experiments on thermoregulation and flight activity of colonies. By using WebLabs, experiments can be conducted via a high speed network where video, sound and other data from colonies are available to a remote researcher. Weblabs are accessed through a Portal, according to an architecture based in the SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) paradigm. Data and metadata collected from experiments are recorded in EML (Ecological Metadata Language) format allowing integration with other systems like SE...
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Integration of Wireless Sensor Networks – WSN to information systems for precision agriculture al... more Integration of Wireless Sensor Networks – WSN to information systems for precision agriculture allows the use of online information for crop monitoring in real time, via the Internet. This paper introduces a reference architecture for information systems to meet this requirement by applying the standards for web services and for geospatial data processing, defined by W3C and OGC. The WSN eKo line provided by MEMSIC Corporation was chosen to evaluate the solution. The results may contribute to the development of effective solutions to integrate WSN to information systems for precision agriculture, so as to enable the use of online resources and real time crop monitoring.
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Pollination is considered one of the most important processes for biodiversity conservation. Stud... more Pollination is considered one of the most important processes for biodiversity conservation. Studies show that successful pollination can improve the amount and the quality of plant fecundation and fruit production, stimulating its use in environmental programs and proposals of sustainable agriculture. However, the success of these actions is based on the knowledge on pollinators, their preservation and interaction with the environment. New initiatives have been created to facilitate and to stimulate the dissemination of this knowledge. The Inter-American Biodiversity Information Network - IABIN and the WebBee are initiatives that support pollinator's data and one of their main features is information about the relationship between pollinators and plants. This paper discusses the representation of plant-pollinator data and analyses the feasibility of doing this with the existing schemas for exchanging biodiversity data. A case study is presented that analyses a use case of a bio...
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The present biodiversity distributed solution using DiGIR / TAPIR protocols and the Darwincore2 s... more The present biodiversity distributed solution using DiGIR / TAPIR protocols and the Darwincore2 schema has been very valuable in the centralized portals, which that can provide distributed information in a very quickly way. Using the same concept this paper presents an architecture based on the case study of pollinators to bring the centralization of the relational information to those portals. This architecture is based on a technological structure to facilitate the implementation and extraction from the providers of that relational information, and proposes a model to make this information reliable to be used with the present specimens information on the portal database.
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In the Behavioral Sciences, there is demand for data acquisition tools to deal with the problem o... more In the Behavioral Sciences, there is demand for data acquisition tools to deal with the problem of event recording during experiments. Handheld computers can be used and customized for this task, offering flexibility, accuracy and speed. This paper describes an application for a PocketPC handheld computer that allows manually operated event datalogging. Among other features, the application software allows customization of the touch-screen buttons and the assignment of events to each button. The data can be exported to a desktop computer for further analysis on spreadsheets. It has been used successfully on field experiments and classes on bee communication and behavior in USA and Brazil. Although other datalogging software is available, none, to our knowledge, currently meet all the criteria of software that is free, user-friendly, compatible with both Mac and PC platforms, and capable of providing direct acoustic feedback during event recording.
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PLOS ONE, 2015
Ecosystem services provided by mobile agents are increasingly threatened by the loss and modifica... more Ecosystem services provided by mobile agents are increasingly threatened by the loss and modification of natural habitats and by climate change, risking the maintenance of biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and human welfare. Research oriented towards a better understanding of the joint effects of land use and climate change over the provision of specific ecosystem services is therefore essential to safeguard such services. Here we propose a methodological framework, which integrates species distribution forecasts and graph theory to identify key conservation areas, which if protected or restored could improve habitat connectivity and safeguard ecosystem services. We applied the proposed framework to the provision of pollination services by a tropical stingless bee (Melipona quadrifasciata), a key pollinator of native flora from the Brazilian Atlantic Forest and important agricultural crops. Based on the current distribution of this bee and that of the plant species used to feed and nest, we projected the joint distribution of bees and plants in the future, considering a moderate climate change scenario (following IPPC). We then used this information, the bee's flight range, and the current mapping of Atlantic Forest remnants to infer habitat suitability and quantify local and regional habitat connectivity for 2030, 2050 and 2080. Our results revealed north to south and coastal to inland shifts in the pollinator distribution during the next 70 years. Current and future connectivity maps unraveled the most important corridors, which if protected or restored, could facilitate the dispersal and establishment of bees during distribution shifts. Our results also suggest that coffee plantations from eastern São Paulo and southern Minas Gerais States could suffer a pollinator deficit in the future, whereas pollination services seem to be secured in southern Brazil. Landowners and governmental agencies could use this information to implement new land use schemes. Overall, our proposed methodological framework could help design novel conservational and agricultural practices that can be crucial to conserve ecosystem services by buffering the joint effect of habitat configuration and climate change.
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Journal of Economic Entomology, 2015
ABSTRACT Food production is challenged by changes in climate and land use and expanding human pop... more ABSTRACT Food production is challenged by changes in climate and land use and expanding human population growth. Proper pollination can increase the production and quality of fruit, nut, oil, and fiber crops.We reviewed crop dependence on pollinators and estimated the economic value of pollination per year for each crop in Brazil. We analyzed 141 crops and found that 85 depend on pollinators. Almost one-third of these crops have an essential or great dependence on pollinators. The economic contribution of pollinators totals �30% (�US$12 billion) of the total annual agricultural income of the dependent crops (totalizing almost US$45 billion). However, half of these figures includes soybean crop (US$5.7 billion of pollinators’ contribution and US$22 billion of annual income). Soybean was considered as having a modest dependence on pollinators, but this remains controversial because pollinator dependence might vary among different varieties cultivated in Brazil. Moreover, we have no information about pollinator dependence regarding some important crops, showing the urgent need for basic research into reproductive biology and pollination ecology.
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Environmental Entomology, 2015
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Papers by Antonio M Saraiva