Conservation-related issues
The combination of sampling biases, plus ecologic and taxonomic knowledge gaps, can lead to misguided conservation decisions. For example, similarly to what had already reported for bats (Delgado-Jaramillo et al., 2020), most of the coldspots in oursensu stricto map (Fig. 2A) are placed along areas severely deforested during the last decades, particularly along the contact zone between Amazonia and Cerrado in the so-called “arch of deforestation” (Becker, 2005). Such coldspots could erroneously be interpreted as regions of lower conservation interest, instead of originated by the absence of information after local extinctions prompted by anthropic impacts (Delgado-Jaramillo et al., 2020).
The greater diversity of Strigidae within the Atlantic forest corresponds to an extensively degraded biome with small-sized and sparse protected areas, whose efficiency is lower than other regions, such as the Amazonia (Sobral-Souza et al., 2018). Worse yet, the buffer zones around these protected areas in the economically prosperous Brazilian regions tend to be as degraded as the surrounding unprotected ones (Almeida-Rocha & Peres, 2021). Bird species were already extinct and others were extirpated, from large parts of the Atlantic Forest, especially the Pernambuco Centre of Endemism in northeast Brazil (Develey & Phalan, 2021). Besides the probably extinct Pernambuco pygmy-owl (G. mooreorum ), the spectacled owl (Pulsatrix perspicillata pulsatrix ) may be extinct in most of its range (Leal & Assis, 1993). Thus, we agree with Oliveira et al. (2017) who highlighted the deficiencies of the Brazilian network of protected areas given the combination of the scarce knowledge on their biodiversity and an inadequate spatial disposition which offers limited or no protection to most species and even evolutionary lineages. We also agree with Jenkins et al. (2015), regarding the need to substantially improve the network of protected areas in Brazil, with an emphasis in the Atlantic forest.