About Us

TAOCA came about through the Project SYNERGIZE (SYNthesising Ecological Responses to deGradation In amaZonian Environments). This project is part of the Synthesis Center SinBiose/CNPq and one of its objectives was to compile data on assemblages of birds, scarab beetles and ants from standardized ecological collections along the sampled areas in the Brazilian Amazon. We store species abundance data for the various focal taxa of the project, in forest (terra firme, várzea and igapó), non-forest (savanna, campinarama) and modified (pasture, agriculture, etc.) environments.

TAOCA emerged in response to the demand to organize, standardize and securely store a huge amount of data received by the SYNERGIZE project. TAOCA becomes the first database to receive standardized ecological data on terrestrial fauna in the Brazilian Amazon.

Currently, TAOCA contains data pertaining to species of birds, scarab beetles and ant species, distributed in natural and modified environments of various geographic locations in the Brazilian Amazon.

The data present in TAOCA can be used to understand the spatio-temporal patterns of Amazonian biodiversity on a large scale, understand the drivers of this biodiversity, contribute to assessments of the conservation status of key taxa, and provide scientific evidence for decision makers.

TAOCA is based at Embrapa Amazônia Oriental (Belém/Brazil) and University of Bristol (Bristol/UK).