BRAZILIAN RESEARCH ON BIRDS IN ANTARCTIC.
Keywords:
Scientific production, ornithology, ornithologists, Antarctic marine birds.Abstract
The Brazilian research activities on ornithology in Antarctic started during the austral summer of 1981/1982. It was a result of a cooperation between the Chilean Antarctic Institute and the Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS/RS). We divided the scientific production on this theme in three periods: I) 1981/1994: start of the Brazilian activities on Antarctic birds and qualification of ornithologists in polar activities; II) 1995/2001: emphasis in researches on physiology/ metabolism and development of activities by researchers not specialized on birds, and III) 2002/2007: retake of the scientific activities on Antarctic birds by Brazilian ornithologists. The main objectives of this review were to characterize the activities of the Brazilian ornithologists in Antarctic, according to the periods previously mentioned, and to present challenges and trends of the Brazilian ornithological activities in Antarctic. We obtained the Brazilian production on Antarctic birds in web-sites of the National Counsel of Technological and Scientific Development (CNPq) and Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES). We included in the analyses: scientific articles (n=23), undergraduate degree conclusion work (n=7), thesis (n=4) and abstracts presented in scientific congresses (n=120). We categorized the production in seven subjects: behavior/foraging, conservation/environmental contamination, population/community ecology, faunistic/migration, physiology/metabolism, genetic/evolution, and others. Population/community ecology, physiology/metabolism and faunistic/migration were the subjects with more number of the recorded publications. We realized that is necessary to increase the number of scientific publications in periodic journals, to spread widely the information obtained for more than 20 years of the activities on ornithology by Brazilian researchers in Antarctic, especially with researches on population/community ecology, behavior, reproduction, genetic/evolution and themes relatives to climate changes.
