De cavernas a continentes, explorando fatores locais e regionais que direcionam a similaridade de comunidades de invertebrados cavernícolas nas regiões afrotropical e neotropical

Abstract

The manuscripts presented in this dissertation started from two main assumptions, which corresponded to the core of the tested hypotheses. The first corresponds to the idea that areas with different historical changes, but with similar environmental conditions can result in communities with similar structures and individuals with similar adaptations and functions. Our second assumption concerns underground communities, where they can be indirectly influenced by various aspects of the external environment. To develop and test our hypotheses, we selected cave communities from regions historically related in the past: The Afrotropical and Neotropical regions. According to these initial ideas, in our first manuscript we tested the influence of ecoregions, biomes, biogeographic regions, lithology, drainage basins and various climatic variables on the patterns exhibited by the similarity of underground communities over an extensive spatial scale. According to the test of all these factors and considering some different aspects of the underground environments, we were able to synthesize a biogeographical classification that was very efficient when compared to the others factors tested. For the second manuscript, we sampled caves from areas that share the same climate (semi-arid) in Namibia and Brazil and where many of their species have shared ancestors. The habitat structuring attributes tested (from the types of substrates to the cave microclimate) showed us very similar patterns when their effects on the cave communities of these two regions were confronted. The shared groups also showed proportions and compositions still very similar. In our discussions, we highlighted how the related ancestral past and how similar environmental pressures in these two regions may have resulted in similar communities, despite the long period of isolation and the great geographical distance.