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Ground-dwelling ants have shown consistent resilience to fire in savanna environments. We carried out a study to investigate how ant community structure responds to fire in a harsh and fragile Cerrado ecosystem, the campos rupestres. We studied the change in the ant communities on a local scale subjected to fire in two rocky outcrop habitats at two different elevations (800m above sea level and 1300m a.s.l.). Pitfall trap samples were set at three different periods after a fire event: one, four, and ten months later. Overall, one hundred and fifteen ant species were collected. On a local scale, at the altitude of 800 m asl, no difference in richness and composition of the ant community was found between burned and control plots, whereas at 1300 m asl the burned areas showed higher richness and different ant composition in comparison to control areas. Differences were clear in the rainy period, four months after the fire. Ten months later, no difference between the richness of ant species in burned and unburned plots was found at higher altitudes, even though the plots showed distinct species composition. These data support the hypothesis that fire must be a structuring disturbance factor for some groups in the ant assemblages and indicate that ant community structure at higher elevations is somehow influenced by the recover of the campos rupestre vegetation.

The effects of Brazil's political crisis on science funding necessary for biodiversity conservation are likely to be global. Brazil is not only the world's most biodiverse nation, it is responsible for the greater part of the Amazon forest, which regulates the climate and provides rain to much of southern South America. Brazil was a world leader in satellite monitoring of land-use change, in-situ biodiversity monitoring, reduction in tropical-forest deforestation, protection of indigenous lands, and a model for other developing nations. Coordinated public responses will be necessary to prevent special-interest groups from using the political crisis to weaken science funding, environmental legislation and law enforcement. © 2018 Magnusson, Grelle, Marques, Rocha, Dias, Fontana, Bergallo, Overbeck, Vale, Tomas, Cerqueira, Collevatti, Pillar, Malabarba, Lins-e-Silva, Neckel-Oliveira, Martinelli, Akama, Rodrigues, Silveira, Scariot and Fernandes.

In the middle of a political and fiscal crisis, the Brazilian government is applying successive budget cuts, including in science funding. Recent cuts radically affect research programs on biodiversity that are crucial components for the design and monitoring of public policies for nature conservation and sustainable development. We analyze the consequences of such cuts on the Research Program on Biodiversity (PPBio), the largest biodiversity research network in Brazil (626 researchers, nine networks in all Brazilian biomes). Brazil holds a substantial part of the world's biodiversity and of tropical forests that play a significant role for regional and global climate stability. If underfunding is maintained, the dismantling of the Brazilian PPBio will have consequences that go beyond biodiversity knowledge itself but affect society as a whole. Brazil will likely fail to reach the National Targets for Biodiversity 2011–2020, and it will be difficult to fulfill the restoration target of the Brazilian NDC and to advance with the sustainable development goals. © 2017 Associação Brasileira de Ciência Ecológica e Conservação