Three decades of Chondrichthyan research in Brazil assessed from conferences’ abstracts: patterns, gaps, and expectations

SOARES, KARLA D. A.; PETEAN, FLÁVIA F.

NEOTROPICAL ICHTHYOLOGY

SOC BRASILEIRA ICTIOLOGIA

Lugar: Porto Alegre; Año: 2023 vol. 21

1679-6225

Of the almost 1,300 currently known Chondrichthyan species, 13.4% occur inBrazilian marine and freshwater environments and more than a half are underextinction threat. There are three main scientific events in Brazil committed topresent and discuss research on fishes (including Chondrichthyes): EBI, SBEEL,and ISPCNF. We analyzed 1,584 submitted abstracts to these events over the last30 years and noticed that, within Chondrichthyes, studies regarding Systematicswere less representative (17%). However, the most shocking result concerned theproportion of women in authorship: almost 30% of abstracts were co-authoredonly by men, and only 25% of those in Chondrichthyan Evolution had women aslast authors, demonstrating that a few women are acting as principal investigatorsin this area of research in Brazil since they might be leaving academia due tolack of support. Besides, the orders Carcharhiniformes and Myliobatiformesrepresented 66.9% of all studied taxa throughout the years, revealing a researchbias on studied taxa which in turn has impacted directly on our knowledge ofChondrichthyan biodiversity and conservation planning. Most importantly, theneglected area of taxonomy needs to be enhanced to allow for appropriate speciesidentification and threatening status evaluation.