Lista vermelha de espécies ameaçadas: efeitos sobre a produção científica e percepção de estudantes sobre a mastofauna ameaçada do Cerrado

Abstract

Important biome in the Neotropics of Cerrado has alarming rates of degradation to loss of biodiversity. Thus, the aim of this work was to investigate the trend of scientific literature on species of endangered fauna (under the influence of national red lists) and diagnose the environmental awareness of students about the fauna of endangered mammals. Articles are evaluated in the work of Thomson Reuters database. The sample group consisted of 131 species from four publications of the Brazilian Red List (1989 and 2013). It occurs increased over time in scientific production for the species endangered in joint analysis. When we established the Red List as a landmark, occurs increased of production only for large and popular species, so the production of knowledge is did not influenced by the red list but by biological and social factors exposure of the species. These two variables consisted of 35% of variation of the data while the residence time in the list was not significant. The species of smaller and unpopular not have the same production effort. Mammals possess greater quantity of published articles and there is a huge amount of species that haven´t indexed articles on the platform. Therefore, there is an asymmetry in the number of articles by type, so very few species were study while much has few or no articles published article with reflection in diverse subject areas. Then the environmental awareness of students about endangered species in 21 cities with different levels of urbanization was investigate. Questionnaire was administer and figures separation for 361 students entered school in the Cerrado biome. Thus, it was evaluate that students can distinguish within that group endangered species not threatened. The bodily dimensions of the species and their popularity on the Internet explained the variation of responses among students. It can be seen once again that the biological factor (size of species) and social (popularity) are important factors for knowledge. However, the time of a species in the Red List was not a significant factor for the model. However, there is variation of knowledge about such mammal species threatened among students from different cities. Students located in distant cities geographically gave distinct responses to the threatened species, while students from nearby cities gave similar answers. Economic variables (human development index, population density and gross national product per capita), environmental (questionnaire) and the development index of basic education school, did not explain the data variation between cities or spatial dependence. Finally, the results demonstrate that the scientific production should pay attention to smaller species. These are reflected in knowledge. Recognizing an endangered species only by its size and popularity may give rise to loss of information (ecological position, social, economic and environmental value). Environmental attitudes of society are driven by how much if knows of biodiversity and so influence decision-making.