Long-term empirical studies of small mammals: the contribution of Dr. Rui Cerqueira to population biology

Abstract

© 2015, Oecologia Australis. All rights reserved. This article is a review of the developmental trajectory of the scientific reasoning on population biology in small mammal studies led by Prof. Rui Cerqueira throughout his career. The multidisciplinarity joining ecology, demography, genetics, epidemiology, biogeography, taxonomy and systematics, and the different approaches guided by relevant ecological questions have always been present in his research projects which led to the progress of the knowledge described here. We report three empirical studies of long-term population biology: the study in Restinga de Barra de Marica, RJ, a pioneer study in many aspects at the time; the study in Sumidouro, RJ, developed in collaboration with the Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, RJ, related to the role of wild rodents in the transmission dynamics of schistosomiasis; and the study in Garrafão, municipality of Guapimirim, RJ. The latter arose from ideas generated in the study of Restinga de Barra de Marica on movements and population structure of some marsupial species and is still in progress, being one of the longest population dynamics studies of small mammals in Brazil. New and important results were obtained in these three projects using the capture-mark-recapture technique that permitted to obtain high quality data. The contribution of Prof. Cerqueira raised the field of mammalogy and in particular the population biology of small mammals in Brazil to a level of international excellence, both in terms of generating new knowledge and training human resources, as well as in terms of progress and sophistication of methodologies and analyses.