The PPBio Amazônia project is mainly aimed at obtaining representative and standardized data on the Amazonian biota. The description of patterns in nature corresponds to the first stage of scientific research work. To understand the causes of these observed patterns, it is necessary to test hypotheses, based on experimentation and verification of the expected results for the formulated hypotheses. The present project aims to adapt experimentation techniques with drosophilids for the study of this taxocenosis in the Amazon. Most drosophilid species develop in small resource patches (predominantly plant parts and decaying fungi). Through the manipulation of these resource patches it is possible to perform experiments including natural units of the communities in which the drosophilids are inserted. In this first stage of the project, a methodology was developed and tested to manipulate the development conditions of immature forms of drosophilids, without removing them from their natural environment. In this way, it will be tested whether the effects of humidity, insolation (possibly indirectly through increased temperature) and the interaction of these factors on immature forms can explain the differentiation of drosophiid communities in forests and open areas. From the results obtained, it was possible to confirm previous results, demonstrating that immature forms of species from within forests do not resist well to the environmental conditions prevailing in open areas, showing a reduction in viability of 83% in this environment.
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