Seeds are the natural means of species regeneration, the product of pollinator activity, the basis of agriculture, a type of non-woody product and a source of essential protein and vegetable fat (seed oil) with many potential uses (industrial oils, biofuels, cosmetics). Consequently they are one of the mainstays of continuing ecosystem services. The Amazon is one of the most biodiverse regions of the world and the forests near Manaus are considered priority conservation areas. Therefore, ecological research in the region is fundamentally important to the sustainable and innovative use of species and yet the scientific capacity in seed biology in the Amazon region is extremely limited. BESANS will train 20 members of the Amazon Seed Network or students, 9 staff and up to 60 seed/seedling producers in Amazonian species seed biology, and upskilling in conservation biology. The partnership is sector specific, linking plant science institutes and aiming to understanding the seed supply chain (seed development, yield, processing and storage) associated with the nascent seed trade in the Amazonas. Research on seed biology is critical to accessing species for various development activities (food/energy security, ability to mitigate/adapt to climate change) and the collection and conservation of germplasm, the sustainable exploitation of biodiversity and restoration of degraded land are key objectives of the Ministry of the Environment (MMA) and INCRA (National Institute for Agrarian Reform). We will ensure the development outcome of a much more functional Amazon Native Seed Centre in Manaus, better able to provide high quality seeds of more species for various industries.

This research partnership will build and strengthen scientific collaboration between UK and Brazilian researchers. Our team will work together to develop new, innovative research in order to reduce the vulnerability of Amazonian cities to extreme climatic events, such as floods and droughts. We hope that this research enables decision-makers in Brazil to identify those cities that need humanitarian assistance most during climate emergencies, and also build long-term resilience (capacity to absorb these shocks) to floods and droughts. Our team members come from various academic disciplines, including statistics, health science, economics, environmental social science, and spatial modelling. We will use secondary data sources to examine how adaptive capacity, local institutions and natural hazard exposure (the occurrence of droughts and floods) influence the negative impacts of these climate events on the well-being of people living in Amazonian cities. We are also interested in how extreme climatic events may influence food prices in these cities, which has implications for the affordability of food for the poorest city-dwellers. Our network also involves local citizens, and we will work with a range of community members in our focal cities in order to make sure that are research is locally-relevant and useful. Finally, we are investing significant effort in improving career opportunities for Amazonian scientists, and will achieve this through UK-Brazil researcher exchange, and workshops to train Masters and PhD students in the UK and Brazil.

Plant domestication and the development of agriculture began shortly after 10,000 years ago in the Americas and several other primary centres around the world, and was one of humankind's most pivotal achievements. Recent advances in palaeobotany and molecular genetics have opened new avenues for understanding when, where, how, and why this crucial change first came about. For example, phylogenetic and phylogeographic studies of extant populations can often identify the wild ancestral population and thus the geographic cradle of origin for each domesticate, pointing the archaeologists to a limited area for survey and excavation. A growing body of genetic, biogeographical, and archaeobotanical data has now established Amazonia as one of the most important centres of plant domestication in the world. Recent genetic and biogeographic studies show that the transitional fringe of seasonal forests and savannahs in SW Amazonia, which encompass the upper Madeira River Basin, were probably the cradle of the domestication of several major American crops, including manioc (Manihot esculenta), peanuts (Arachis hypogaea), peach palm (Bactris gasipaes), coca (Erythroxylum coca), chilli peppers (Capsicum baccattum), annatto (Bixa orellana), and tobacco (Nicotina tabacco) (Clement et al. 2010; Piperno and Pearsall 1998). Despite being the most important centre of domestication in lowland South America, until now no interdisciplinary projects have documented the domestication of these important crops in their cradle of origin. To address this issue, we proposed to organise two workshops and conduct preliminary research activities to plan, write and submit a 3-5 yr international interdisciplinary project integrating molecular genetics, plant biogeography, archaeology, archaeobotany and paleoecology. The main objectives of the project will be to: i) investigate the history of major Amazonian crops including manioc, peach palm, chilli peppers and annatto; ii) reconstruct the context of early agriculture; and iii) investigate the timing and nature of human impact on the environment in the upper Madeira River, SW Amazonia. These objectives build on two previously separate lines of research coordinated by Iriarte and Clement: paleoecology and archaebotany of landscape transformations of the Araucaria forests of southern Brazil (AHRC-Fapesp) and the Purus-Madeira interfluve (ERC), and the origin, dispersal and phylogeography of native Amazonian crops (Fapeam, Fapeam-AIRD, CNPq, Fapesp), respectively. The project is well-timed to combine state-of-the-art techniques to address the complexity of plant domestication and the development of agriculture. Research on crop origins are benefiting from the refinement of microfossil botanical techniques, in particular starch granules retrieved from the residues of stone tools used to process plants, which are allowing archaeobotanists to document root crops in tropical regions exhibiting poor preservation of macrobotanical remains (visible remains of seeds and fruits) (Piperno 2011). Palaeoecological techniques will help reconstruct the Late Pleistocene through Holocene vegetation history of the upper Madeira River and, in particular, the natural environment and plant associations in which the first crops were domesticated. Particular emphasis will be given to how and when humans began to alter their environments, using fire history to reconstruct the relation between natural- and human-caused processes. Genetic analysis can identify the wild populations from which the first selections were derived to start the domestication of our modern crops, as well as to trace dispersals out of these centres of domestication.

The world's rainforests are incredible reservoirs of biodiversity, holding over 60% of the world's animal species and 67% of all tree species. Conserving this remarkable richness is fundamental for the planet's biological integrity. Yet, it is also under threat from a range of human pressures, such as deforestation, the disturbance of the remaining forests by fires or selective logging, as well as climate change that can exacerbate other threats. These threats are prevalent in the world's largest tropical forests, the Amazon. For example, one third of the Amazon has already been cut down or disturbed by forest fires and selective logging. The climate has also changed markedly in the past 40 years, with some regions facing increased temperatures of 2.5 degrees Celsius and marked reductions in rainfall in the dry season. Give the scale and intensity of these changes, it is imperative that we understand how they are affecting the Amazon's diversity. To date, this has been carried out by using satellites and large-scale plot networks to assess changes in carbon stored by trees or the species composition of the forest. We have much less information on rainforest animals, which are not visible from space or airplanes, and are mobile and hard even for humans to detect on the ground. The absence of large-scale and standardised information on rainforest animals means we do not know how human impacts are affecting them at large scales. Our RAINFAUNA project aims to resolves this knowledge gap by using new technologies and methods to make the first Amazon-wide assessment of the density of populations of birds and invertebrates (insects and arthropods). For birds, we focus on the antbirds, a group of understorey species that are emblematic of rainforest fauna. For invertebrates, we focus on species living in the leaf-litter and topsoil. These two groups provide important information for conservation and ecology. Birds are the best-known faunal group, and estimating their densities will allow us to determine population sizes of species for the first time. Understanding invertebrate activities and diversity provides insights into the important functional roles they carry out in the forests, from decomposition of leaves to the mixing of the topsoil. We will use the forest microclimate to understand animal responses to climate change and forest disturbance. The temperature and humidity of the understorey and leaf litter are key to understanding tropical forest fauna, as they describe the conditions experienced by species. We will use sampling to explore this link between microclimate and fauna, using automated recording units to assess tropical fauna at 180 sites. We will also develop our microclimate model so it can map forest temperature and humidity across the basin. This will allow us to understand how the density of birds and activities of insect changes over space. Crucially, we can also explore how microclimate - and therefore the fauna - will change in the future under different scenarios of climate change and forest disturbance.