Mata Atlântica | Biomas do Brasil | Ep.8

The <i>muriqui</i> is considered the biggest South American monkey, weighing almost 35 pounds. It's known as "forest gardener", that's because it's a monkey that feeds off fruits and spreads the seeds of various plants throughout the forest through its feces. Unfortunately this monkey is at serious risk of extinction - it's estimated that today only 1500 individuals still exist.

They are basically extinct because of hunting and destruction of their habitat as well. Which is exactly the biome we will study now, so put some blood in that eye because now there's a bit more Atlantic Forest for you. ♪ The Atlantic Forest fauna is extremely exuberant.

The high vegetal density offers an extraordinary diversity of shelter and food for the animals. The interaction between animals and plants here in the Atlantic Forest is awesome, for instance, we have the aphids, which are parasitic animals that feed off the nectar of plants. We have pollinator animals that feed off the nectar of plants and end up helping the reproduction of these same plants.

We have animals that feed off leaves of vegetals, which are herbivore animals that in turn, are eaten by carnivore animals. So notice that there's a highly complex food chain inside this biome. As you already figured out, the biodiversity of animals is too high here.

When it comes to mammals only, we have 300 species, of which 50 are endemic, a big diversity of bats, rodents. We can highlight amid these mammals, the puma, the <i>muriqui</i> monkey, the golden lion tamarin, the <i>caxinguele</i> squirrel, and the <i>paca</i>. There's almost one hundred species of birds, of which 200 are also endemic, highlighting the <i>aracari-banana</i>, seven-color <i>saira</i>, <i>tangara</i>-dancer, surucua and ariramba.

When it comes to reptiles, there are almost 150 known species, highlighting broad-snouted caiman alligators and <i>jararaca</i> snakes, a serpent that causes a lot of accidents here in Brazil, specially with people who live near the Atlantic Forest? You guessed it! Here in this biome, we also find the <i>surucucu</i> snake, which is the biggest venomous snake of South America.

♫ Of course we can't forget the amphibians, besides, they love moisture. We find 380 species in the Atlantic Forest, of which 90 are endemic. But unfortunately, the amphibian population is dwindling due to the fragmentation of the Atlantic Forest - as I told you, this is a fragmented biome, it's irregular - today we have pieces of Atlantic Forest scattered all over Brazil.

It turns out that sometimes these animals stay isolated in regions of Atlantic Forest often deforested, drier regions, and they don't like living in these places, but they can no longer migrate because they are truly isolated, thus they end up dying. Hence the importance of ecological corridors, which are forest areas that connect a section of the Atlantic Forest to other section, preventing them from staying isolated. Thus allowing the displacement of species from one place to another, but this is very little utilized in Brazil.

Ecological corridors are important because they allow the exchange of genetic flow between populations of a same species. So what happens? Say we have two fragments of Atlantic Forest, the monkeys that live here suffered a mutation that makes them more resistant to the yellow fever virus.

If there's an ecological corridor, these monkeys move here, mate with the monkeys of this place and take their genetic mutation there. Now, if there's no ecological corridor, this mutation that happened here won't reach there, and when the yellow fever virus reach this place, all the monkeys will die. Let's analyze the biological interactions we have in this river that cuts through the Atlantic Forest.

Just so you know, we have the algae in the surface, which make photosynthesis and produce oxygen that's released in the water, so they put oxygen in the water that exists here and also provide food for herbivore fish. Here we have the <i>cascudo</i> fish, which loves to feed off remains of vegetals. We also have carnivore fish, such as the <i>traira</i> fish, which feeds off herbivore fish.

We also have detritivore fish, which feed off the remains of dead animals, the <i>saguiru</i> fish is a type of detritivore fish that feeds off decays, remains, it's kind of a "water vulture", so to speak. We still have birds on the river banks, such as herons and martin kingfisher, just preying on the fish here in order to feed themselves. Notice how we have a large abundance of interactions in such a small ecosystem.

Unfortunately these interactions are at risk of disappearing due to the destruction of the Atlantic Forest. ♫ Unfortunately, the Atlantic Forest is located in the Brazilian coast, which is the most populated region of our country. Since the discovery times until now, the Portuguese, the French, the Dutch, always saw this biome as a source of profit.

Even before the discovery, native tribes lived in this region and also degraded this forest. So it has been destroyed for a long time and of course after Brazil was discovered the destruction of the Atlantic Forest became more frantic. Thousands of trees such as the <i>pau-brasil</i>, the <i>jequitiba</i>, the rosewood, have been extracted and utilized for shipbuilding, hunting and animal trafficking, in other words, this region has been heavily exploited.

Bear in mind that various economic cycles of the Brazilian history, developed out of the Atlantic Forest, such as sugar-cane, gold mining, coffee, all those activities caused the deforestation of the Atlantic Forest. Keep in mind that this soil is too poor of nutrients. So if you deforest part of the Atlantic Forest and want to plant something there, the soil quickly wears out.

So what does the person? The person deforests the nearest part, wears out the soil, deforests the other part, thus causing great deforestation of our Atlantic Forest. It's worth mentioning that after these economic cycles, we had the urbanization process, the industrialization process, housing and whatnot, all of it with 150 million Brazilians living in this region, was responsible for destroying almost the whole Atlantic Forest.

About 3/4 of Brazilian endangered species live in the Atlantic Forest, 185 out of 265 endangered species of animals live in this biome, basically 70% of them. 9 out of 17 primate species are endemic to the Atlantic Forest. The destruction of the Atlantic Forest greatly hurts us.

This forest captures carbon from the atmosphere, contributing to amenize climate changes, floodings. Rivers that supply fresh water for the cities depend on the Atlantic Forest to keep existing. 120 million Brazilians depend on this biome to have fresh water.

Various parasites that dwell in these forests, such as the <i>Trypanosoma cruzi </i> and the yellow fever virus. Destroying them means to increase the risk of contact between viruses and humans. Case in point!

Today several Brazilian cities are suffering with scorpions, more accidents involving these animals are increasing. Do you know why is this happening? Because of the destruction of the Atlantic Forest.

As long as these scorpions live here, from the moment you destroy this forest, they no longer have option but to live near people's houses and of course, heavily increasing the risk of contact, therefore the risk of accidents. Just so you know, 7 out of the 9 biggest hidrographic basins of Brazil, depend on the Atlantic Forest to exist. In other words, the preservation of this biome is rather important for the maintenance of fresh water, so that we have water in our houses, hence the importance of creating preservation parks such as this one here, take a look at how the forest is preserved.

There's no point grabbing a land area, shut it down and leave people outside, we need to bring the community into the issue, make an environmental education so that people realize that this is too valuable as long as it's alive, not dead - we must preserve the Atlantic Forest today! The good news is that we still have various initiatives to recover areas of Atlantic Forest, besides, the number of forest areas is increasing each year, due to reforestation processes. We need to keep that up, recover the forest that was too damaged by us, Brazilians.

All in all, needless to say that was a treat to be here with you, a big hug, bye! <b>Subs: <i>msfreelancer</i></b> http://tinyurl.