Ana Carolina Antunes

I am particularly passionate about the Amazon forest and its dynamics, and my main research focuses on understanding how forest disturbances, associated with biodiversity changes, affect food webs and associated ecosystem functions in terrestrial vertebrate communities across this biome. Human-made disturbances have triggered changes in biodiversity, such as species extinctions and range shifts, which destabilized food webs; yet, we still lack a mechanistic understanding of the relationship between biodiversity change and ecosystem function. By integrating trophic web approaches with ecological biodiversity and biogeography modeling, I aim to evaluate energy fluxes across vertebrate food webs while accounting for both biotic (species interactions and network composition) and abiotic (environmental, land use and biogeographic) factors. In that way, it will be possible to connect these changes to specific ecosystem functions across the studied food webs.

More broadly, I am interested in looking at ecological communities from an energetic perspective, for example to link belowground and aboveground communities. Energy fluxes among trophic levels provides a common metric to study ecological processes that shape biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (e.g. intensity of predation pressure). Moreover, it can used as an indicator of key ecosystem services, such as seed dispersal or pest control. Applying these energetics approaches more frequently to tropical ecosystems, are also my great interest at the moment, as they offer unique insights into these dynamics.

Gauzens, B., Kalinkat, G., Antunes, A. C., Boy, T., O’Gorman, E. J., Jacob, U., ... & Brose, U. (2024). Quantitative description of six fish species’ gut contents and prey abundances in the Baltic Sea (1968–1978). Scientific data, 11(1), 236.

Antunes, A. C., Berti, E., Brose, U., Hirt, M. R., Karger, D. N., O’Connor, L. M., ... & Gauzens, B. (2024). Linking biodiversity, ecosystem function, and Nature’s contributions to people: a macroecological energy flux perspective. Trends in Ecology & Evolution.

Mathieu, J., Antunes, A. C., Barot, S., Bonato Asato, A. E., Bartz, M. L., Brown, G. G., ... & Eisenhauer, N. (2022). sOilFauna-a global synthesis effort on the drivers of soil macrofauna communities and functioning.

Antunes, A. C., Montanarin, A., Gräbin, D. M., dos Santos Monteiro, E. C., de Pinho, F. F., Alvarenga, G. C., Ahumada, J., Wallace, R. B., Ramalho, E. E., Barnett, A. P. A., Bager, A., Lopes, A. M. C., Keuroghlian, A., Giroux, A., Herrera, A. M., de Almeida Correa, A. P., Meiga, A. Y., de Almeida Jácomo, A. T., de Barros Barban, A., Antunes, A., de Almeida Coelho, A. G., Camilo, A. R., Nunes, A. V., dos Santos Maroclo Gomes, A. C., da Silva Zanzini, A. C., Castro, A. B., Desbiez, A. L. J., Figueiredo, A., de Thoisy, B., Gauzens, B., Oliveira, B. T., de Lima, C. A., Peres, C. A., Durigan, C. C., Brocardo, C. R., da Rosa, C. A., Zárate-Castañeda, C., Monteza-Moreno, C. M., Carnicer, C., Trinca, C. T., Polli, D. J., da Silva Ferraz, D., Lane, D. F., da Rocha, D. G., Barcelos, D. C., Auz, D., Rosa, D. C. P., Silva, D. A., Silvério, D. V., Eaton, D. P., Nakano-Oliveira, E., Venticinque, E., Junior, E. C., Mendonça, E. N., Vieira, E. M., Isasi-Catalá, E., Fischer, E., Castro, E. P., Oliveira, E. G., de Melo, F. R., de Lima Muniz, F., Rohe, F., Baccaro, F. B., Michalski, F., Paim, F. P., Santos, F., Anaguano, F., Palmeira, F. B. L., da Silva Reis, F., Aguiar-Silva, F. H., de Avila Batista, G., Zapata-Ríos, G., Forero-Medina, G., Neto, G. D. S. F., Alves, G. B., Ayala, G., Pedersoli, G. H. P., El Bizri, H. R., do Prado, H. A., Mozerle, H. B., Costa, H. C. M., Lima, I. J., Palacios, J., de Resende Assis, J., Boubli, J. P., Metzger, J. P., Teixeira, J. V., Miranda, J. M. D., Polisar, J., Salvador, J., Borges-Almeida, K., Didier, K., de Lima Pereira, K. D., Torralvo, K., Gajapersad, K., Silveira, L., Maioli, L. U., Maracahipes-Santos, L., Valenzuela, L., Benavalli, L., Fletcher, L., Paolucci, L. N., Zanzini, L. P., da Silva, L. Z., Rodrigues, L. C. R., Benchimol, M., Oliveira, M. A., Lima, M., da Silva, M. B., dos Santos Junior, M. A., Viscarra, M., Cohn-Haft, M., Abrahams, M. I., Benedetti, M. A., Marmontel, M., Hirt, M. R., Tôrres, N. M., Junior, O. F. C., Alvarez-Loayza, P., Jansen, P., Prist, P. R., Brando, P. M., Perônico, P. B., do Nascimento Leite, R., Rabelo, R. M., Sollmann, R., Beltrão-Mendes, R., Ferreira, R. A. F., Coutinho, R., da Costa Oliveira, R., Ilha, R., Hilário, R. R., Pires, R. A. P., Sampaio, R., da Silva Moreira, R., Botero-Arias, R., Martinez, R. V., de Albuquerque Nóbrega, R. A., Fadini, R. F., Morato, R. G., Carneiro, R. L., Almeida, R. P. S., Ramos, R. M., Schaub, R., Dornas, R., Cueva, R., Rolim, S., Laurindo, S., Espinosa, S., Fernandes, T. N., Sanaiotti, T. M., Alvim, T. H. G., Dornas, T. T., Piña, T. E. N., Caetano Andrade, V. L., Santiago, W. T. V., Magnusson, W. E., Campos, Z., Ribeiro, M. C. (2022): AMAZONIA CAMTRAP: A data set of mammal, bird, and reptile species recorded with camera traps in the Amazon forest. Ecology

Antunes, A. C., Gauzens, B., Brose, U., Potapov, A. M., Jochum, M., Santini, L., Eisenhauer, N., Ferlian, O., Cesarz, S., Scheu, S., Hirt, M. R. (2022): Environmental drivers of local abundance–mass scaling in soil animal communities. Oikos

Antunes, A. C., F. Baccaro, V. L. Caetano Andrade, J. F. Ramos, R. Da Silva Moreira,  A. A. Barnett (2019): Igapó seed patches: a potentially key resource for terrestrial vertebrates in a seasonally flooded forest of central Amazonia. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society

Antunes, A. C.; Baccaro, Fabrício; Barnett, Adrian A. What bite marks can tell us: Use of on-fruit tooth impressions to study seed consumer identity and consumption patterns within a rodent assemblage. Mammalian Biology, 82, 74-79, 2017.