Metropolitan lizards? Urbanization gradient and the density of lagartixas () in a tropical city.

Urbanization, with its cohort of environmental stressors, has a dramatic effect on wildlife, causing loss of biodiversity and decline in population abundance customarily associated with increasing levels of impervious surface and fragmentation of native habitats. Some studies suggest that faunal species from open habitats, and with higher abundance in natural environments, seem more likely to tolerate and live in urban environments. Here I evaluate how the level of urbanization affects lagartixas () one of the most common lizards found in open vegetation ecosystems in NE Brazil.

Urban forest fragments as unexpected sanctuaries for the rare endemic ghost butterfly from the Atlantic forest.

Anthropogenic land expansion, particularly urbanization, is pervasive, dramatically modifies the environment and is a major threat to wildlife with its associated environmental stressors. Urban remnant vegetation can help mitigate these impacts and could be vital for species unable to survive in harsh urban environments. Although resembling nonurban habitats, urban vegetation remnants are subject to additional environmental stresses.

Hand preferences and differences in extractive foraging in seven capuchin monkey species.

Tool use and extractive foraging could be drivers for right hand use preference. The robust capuchins, Sapajus, are more specialized for destructive and extractive foraging than the gracile capuchins, Cebus. Thus, we predicted them to show right-hand preference and higher rates of extractive foraging when compared to the gracile capuchins.