Rainforests Of South America Research Articles

Intratropical migration of a Nearctic-Neotropical migratory songbird (Catharus fuscescens) in South America with implications for migration theory

Abstract:Recent advances in tracking technology have revealed significant intratropical movement of Nearctic–Neotropical migratory songbirds during their non-breeding season. We report the movement of 25 veeries (Catharus fuscescens) over multiple seasons (2009–2013) through equatorial rain forests of South America. Veeries initially settled on the Brazilian Shield geological formation but undertook an intratropical migration to a second South American region in January, February or March. Consequently, our study is the first to track individual forest passerines to document an annual migration from the Brazilian Shield to the Guiana Shield and into lowland regions of Amazonia. The movement and settlement patterns showed no spatiotemporal relationships with Nearctic–Neotropical migration, remained in accordance with the flood pulse of the Amazon basin, and were spatially and temporally complex suggesting relatively ancient ancestral origins. The ability to isolate the migration event from Nearctic–Neotropical migration is an important contribution to the ongoing discourse regarding the evolution of trans-hemispheric migration in the genus Catharus.

Genetic Identity, Ancestry and Parentage in Farmer Selections of Cacao from Aceh, Indonesia Revealed by Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) Markers

Cacao (Theobroma cacao L.), the source of cocoa powder and cocoa butter used for chocolate, originated in the rainforests of South America. Indonesia is the 3rd largest cocoa producer in the world with an annual cocoa output of 0.84 million tons. The main objective of this study was to examine the genetic background of superior farmer-selected clones from farmers’ fields, in order to provide a scientific basis to support cacao rehabilitation in Aceh, Indonesia. The pilot experiment assessed 136 genotypes, including 80 Aceh farmer selections and 56 reference international clones, using 53 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers. Principle coordinates analysis revealed that the Aceh farmer selections were largely hybrids between Upper Amazon Forastero and Trinitario. Bayesian clustering analysis further specified the germplasm groups of the ancestral contributors. Of the 80 farmer selections, parentage analysis identified 30 parent-offspring relationships contributed by 16 progenitors. Spatial genetic analysis showed no significant global spatial correlation, but local spatial correlation was detected. These results suggest that only a fraction of cacao germplasm from Upper Amazon has been incorporated into farmers’ fields, despite the use of diversie progenitors in breeding programs and seed gardens. This relatively narrow genetic background was likely due either to limited access to diverse hybrids by local farmers or to the over-emphasis on selecting for yield and morphological appearance, such as pods and bean size. Based on the results, a subset of farmer selections with diverse genetic background are chosen and evaluated in field trials.

Assessment of antioxidant and antibacterial potential of borojo fruit (Borojoa patinoi Cuatrecasas) from the rainforests of South America

Borojo (Borojoa patinoi) is an endemic fruit of the rainforests of Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Panama that is listed for approval as novel food in the European Union. In this work the antioxidant activity (measured with DPPH, FIC and FRAP), the organic acid and sugar contents, the volatile profile and the antibacterial properties against 26 pathogenic and non-pathogenic strains were studied. Total phenol contents (TPC) ranged from 36.41 to 53.6mg GAE/100g fw while total flavonoids (TFC) from 88.45 to 49.83mg RE/100g fw. The extract showed also good antioxidant activity highly correlated to TPC and TFC. Among 21 volatile compounds detected by SPME–GC–MS, 2-nonanol represented the main component. The antimicrobial activity was in a decreasing order: Salmonella enteritidis>Salmonella typhimurium>Listeria monocytogenes>Staphylococcus aureus>Brochotrix thermosphacta. The biological properties of Borojo-fruit suggested that it is a promising new antioxidant and antibacterial agent.

Establishment phase, spatial pattern, age, and demography of Oenocarpus bataua var. bataua can be a legacy of past loggings in the Colombian Andes

Oenocarpus bataua var. bataua is a key species in the tropical rain forests of South America because it is one of the 10 most abundant tree species and one of most used by Amerindians. However, there is an acute lack of verifiable information about the duration of some of its ontogenic phases, the exact age of the palms, and the effect of gap formation on its spatial distribution. We employed 36 permanent plots (PP) of 0.1ha randomly distributed in a forest of 700ha in the Colombian Andes, in which we inventoried the stemmed palms at the establishment of the PP and after 13.4years to study some ontogenic and demographic traits of this species. We dated underground and aboveground stems using the 14C bomb-effect and estimated the stem’s age by the rate of leaf-scar formation. We aimed at answering the following questions: (i) what are the main morphological characteristics of the underground stem and how long does it takes for its formation?; (ii) what is the pattern of its spatial distribution at the landscape level, and what factors help to explain it?; (iii) is the population structure and demography associated with the previous history of the forest?; (iv) is the first flowering a function of the vigour of the palms?. We found that the underground stem of adult palms is usually obconical and reaches 73±13cm in length (±standard deviation). The duration of the establishment phase in eleven palms was almost constant: 37.5±0.7years. The palms with smaller and larger diameters tend to flourish when the stems are 18 and 7years old (44–55years old from seedlings), respectively. We found that this species has a clumped spatial pattern. Several palms dated gave ages between 91 and 92years, while others about 53years. The bell shaped frequency distribution of the palm’s length and age suggest a lack of younger palms in this area. We interpret that both, the clumped spatial pattern and their age distribution, are a legacy from past selective loggings that induced even-aged cohorts of palms at the landscape level. This species is not in equilibrium because the population tends to be reduced through time given that its doubling time is 37.4years and its half-life 29.3years.

Communal nesting, activity patterns, and population characteristics in the near-threatened monito del monte, Dromiciops gliroides

The “living fossil,” Dromiciops gliroides (monito del monte), is an endemic marsupial inhabiting the temperate rain forests of South America. It is cavity-dependent and faces high energetic costs associated with thermoregulation during the austral winter. Although D. gliroides is well known for seed dispersal in temperate rain forests, its ecology, behavior, and long-term population dynamics have received little attention. We monitored a population of D. gliroides and studied variation in abundance and density and seasonal changes in body mass and body condition index (BCI). In addition, we monitored activity and communal nesting with camera traps and nest boxes, respectively. Over 4 years we documented a mean population density of 26 (95% confidence interval = 19–32) individuals/ha. We found significantly greater body mass and BCI for females than for males, suggesting different energetic strategies during the prehibernation period. Animals were nocturnal and active until dawn. Communal nesting occurred during summer and early fall, but torpor by single individuals and small groups was increasingly frequent during winter. Communal nesting could be a key behavioral strategy affecting survival. However, given the greater frequency in warm seasons and groups composed of postreproductive females and juveniles, communal nesting might be more related to parental care associated with kin selection than to thermoregulation.

Construction and analysis of a leaf cDNA library from cold stressed rubber tree clones

Background Rubber tree [Hevea Braziliensis (Willd. ex Adr. de Juss.) Muell-Arg.], a native species of the Amazon Rainforest in South America, belonging to the Euphorbiaceae family, is world’s major source of natural latex. Brazil, despite being the center of origin and diversity of the species and latex main producer at the end of XIX century, nowadays imports around 70% of the rubber consumed in the country. Although the Amazonian basin provides optimal conditions for rubber plantation, the occurrence of South American leaf blight (SALB) disease, caused by the ascomycete Microcyclus ulei, limits the rubber production in this region. Therefore, rubber plantation has been extended to suboptimal areas that are prominently located in northeast India, Vietnam, southern China and southern plateau of Brazil. Besides the new conditions for crop development, these new areas present stress conditions like low temperatures, dry periods and wind. It was shown that low temperatures affect the development and latex production of rubber trees. Breeding programs have been searching for clones adapted to these suboptimal areas. A complete cycle of breeding and selection takes at least 20 years to succeed in obtaining a superior clone. As such, development of new methods for early evaluation is essential to reduce and optimize the breeding management. Aiming to help in the development of these methods, in this work, we have constructed a leaf cDNA library to study ESTs (Expressed Sequence Tags) from cold stressed rubber trees. The originated sequences from this library can be used to create an ESTs databank and will provide genetic knowledge about how rubber trees cope with chilling stress, being also a valuable source of polymorphic molecular markers, such as SSRs and SNPs. Some of these markers may be associated to chilling tolerance, and early evaluation would be possible in young rubber tree clones.

Nesting Biology, Home Range, and Habitat Use of the Brown Wood Rail (Aramides wolfi) in Northwest Ecuador

The Brown Wood Rail (Aramides wolfi) is a globally threatened, poorly known species endemic to the Chocó rain forests of South America. We provide a first report on the species' nesting biology, home range, and habitat use. Nests (n = 16) were open cups ∼2 m above ground and were more common in secondary forest than expected by chance. Median clutch size was four eggs, incubation lasted >19 days, the precocial young departed the nest within 24 hrs of hatching, and 66% of nests successfully produced young. At least two adults participated in parental care and pair bonds appear to be maintained year-round. The home range of an adult radio-tracked for 7 months was 13.5 ha in secondary and selectively-logged forest contiguous to primary forest. This easily overlooked species may be more resilient to moderate levels of habitat degradation than previously suspected, but extensive deforestation throughout its range justifies its current status as ‘Vulnerable to Extinction’.

Diversity patterns of climbing plants and vascular epiphytes in the Valdivian rain forest of South America: a synthesis between 2000 and 2010

Diversity patterns of climbing plants and vascular epiphytes in the Valdivian rain forest of South America: a synthesis between 2000 and 2010

Methylation patterns revealed by MSAP profiling in genetically stable somatic embryogenic cultures of Ocotea catharinensis (Lauraceae)

Ocotea catharinensis is a rare tree species indigenous to the Atlantic rainforest of South America. In spite of its value as a hardwood species, it is in danger of extinction. The species erratically produces seeds showing irregular flowering and slow growth. Therefore, plants are not easily replaced. Tissue culture-based techniques are commonly used for obtaining living material for tree propagation and in vitro preservation. Therefore, a high-frequency somatic embryogenic system was developed for the species. In the present work, the genetic fidelity of cell aggregates and somatic embryos at various stages of in vitro development of O. catharinensis was investigated using RAPD and AFLP markers. Both analyses confirmed the absence of genetic variation in all developmental stages of O. catharinensis embryogenic cultures, verifying that the in vitro system is genetically stable. The cultures were also analyzed for their methylation profiles at 5′-CCGG-3′ sites by identifying methylation-sensitive amplification polymorphisms. Some of these markers differentiated cell aggregates from embryo bodies. The sequencing of ten MSAP markers revealed that four sequences showed significant similarity to genes encoding plant proteins. Particularly, the predicted amino acid sequence of the fragment designated as OcEaggHMttc155 was similar to the enzyme 1–aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate oxidase (ACO), which is involved in the biosynthesis of ethylene, and its expression was reported to occur from the beginning to the intermediate stages of plant embryo development. Here, we suggest that this enzyme is possibly involved in the control of the earliest stages of somatic embryogenesis of O. catharinensis, and an approach to study ACO expression during somatic embryogenesis is proposed.

Platyrrhinus recifinus (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae)

Abstract Platyrrhinus recifinus (Thomas, 1901) is a medium-sized leaf-nosed fruit bat commonly known as the Recife's broad-nosed bat because of its type locality, in the city of Recife, Pernambuco State, northeastern Brazil. Its distribution was originally thought to be circumscribed to the Atlantic rain forests of northeastern and southeastern Brazil but was recently broadened to encompass several locations in the tropical rain forests of South America, including Amazonian records in Guyana and Suriname in northern South America, and Parana State in southern South America. Individuals of P. recifinus have been captured in primary and secondary forest, and open areas ranging from 200 to 1,530 m in elevation. The conservation status of this species was recently listed as “Least Concern” by The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

Induction of apoptosis by Uncaria tomentosa through reactive oxygen species production, cytochrome c release, and caspases activation in human leukemia cells

Uncaria tomentosa (Wild.) DC., found in the Amazon rain forest in South-America and known commonly as cat’s claw, has been used in traditional medicine to prevent and treat inflammation and cancer. Recently, it has been found to possess potent anti-inflammation activities. In this study, we extracted cat’s claw using four different solvents of different polarities and compared their relative influence on proliferation in human premyelocytic leukemia HL-60 cell lines. Cat’s claw n-hexane extracts (CC-H), ethyl acetate extracts (CC-EA) and n-butanol extracts (CC-B) had a greater anti-cancer effect on HL-60 cells than those extracted with methanol (CC-M). Furthermore, CC-EA induced DNA fragmentation in HL-60 cells in a clearly more a concentration- and time-dependent manner than the other extracts. CC-EA-induced cell death was characterized by cell body shrinkage and chromatin condensation. Further investigating the molecular mechanism behind CC-EA-induced apoptosis, sells treated with CC-EA underwent a rapid loss of mitochondrial transmembrane (Δ Ψ m) potential, stimulation of phosphatidylserine flip-flop, release of mitochondrial cytochrome c into cytosol, induction of caspase-3 activity in a time-dependent manner, and induced the cleavage of DNA fragmentation factor (DFF-45) and PARP poly-(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP). CC-EA promoted the up-regulation of Fas before the processing and activation of procaspase-8 and cleavage of Bid. In addition, the apoptosis induced by CC-EA was accompanied by up-regulation of Bax, down-regulation of Bcl-X L and cleavage of Mcl-1, suggesting that CC-EA may have some compounds that have anti-cancer activities and that further studies using cat’s claw extracts need to be pursued. Taken together, the results of our studies show clearly that CC-EA’s induction of apoptosis in HL-60 cells may make it very important in the development of medicine that can trigger chemopreventive actions in the body.

A trade-off between the amount and distance of pollen dispersal triggered by the mixed foraging behaviour of Sephanoides sephaniodes (Trochilidae) on Lapageria rosea (Philesiaceae)

Nectar thieves may increase or decrease pollinator-mediated pollen flow and thus may have positive or negative effects on plant reproductive success. In temperate rainforests of South America, the hummingbird Sephanoides sephaniodes acts as both a pollinator and non-destructive nectar thief on Lapageria rosea. Although pollinators that also act as nectar thieves have the potential to significantly modify plant reproductive success, no previous study has addressed this. To determine how the mixed behaviour of S. sephanoides affects pollen flow, we experimentally exposed some flowers to nectar theft and excluded nectar thieves from other flowers. We then assessed pollen dispersal into the floral neighbourhood. Thieved flowers exported less pollen, but the pollen exported was transferred farther into the neighbourhood. Our findings indicate a trade-off between distance and amount of pollen flow.

First Report of Bougainvillea spectabilis chlorotic vein-banding virus Infecting Bougainvillea Plants in Taiwan.

Bougainvillea (Bougainvillea spectabilis), native to Amazonian rainforests in South America, is an important ornamental and landscaping plant that is widely distributed in tropical and subtropical areas. A new virus disease, Bougainvillea chlorotic vein-banding, caused by a Badnavirus, Bougainvillea spectabilis chlorotic vein-banding virus (BsCVBV), was first reported in Brazil in 2001 (1) and recently discovered in Taiwan. Infected bougainvillea developed symptoms such as mottling, chlorosis, vein-banding, and stunting. Severe leaf-distortion symptoms were observed in the susceptible hybrid Taipei Red, the most popular bougainvillea cultivar in Taiwan. In electron microscopic observations, typical bacilliform virions measuring 28 × 130 to 150 nm were observed in infected bougainvillea cells. In addition, our transmission tests demonstrated that the virus could be easily transmitted among different bougainvillea cultivars by bud grafting but not by mechanical inoculation. Bougainvillea plants showed apparent symptoms 1 month after grafting. For molecular identification, viral DNA was extracted from the test plants (2), and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was performed using the primers selected from the DNA sequences of ORF III of Sugarcane bacilliform virus (GenBank Accession No. M89923). The sequence of the forward primer was 5'-TCA AAG TTT GAT TTG AAG AGC GGG-3' and the sequence of the reverse primer was 5'-CTT GCA TAC TGC TCC CCA TCC-3' The primers amplified a 676-bp PCR product (GenBank Accession No. DQ103759). Nucleotide and deduced amino acid sequences were 82 and 90% identical, respectively, to the corresponding region of the Brazilian strain of BsCVBV (GenBank Accession No. AY532653). These data indicate that the bougainvillea disease occurring in Taiwan is caused by a strain of BsCVBV. Reference: (1) C. M. Chagas et al. Virus Rev. Res. 6:153, 2001. (2) H.-J. Su et al. J. Phytopathol. 151:290, 2003.

Tropical dermatology: Fungal tropical diseases

Fungal infections are common in tropical countries and can have an important impact on public health. Lobomycosis is a common fungal infection in the tropical rain forest of South America, and paracoccidioidomycosis (South American blastomycosis) is a widespread and sometimes severe illness. Penicilliosis marneffei is an opportunistic infection of AIDS patients in southeast Asia. Chromoblastomycosis and mycetomas are causes of morbidity around the world. Sporotrichosis is a worldwide subcutaneous mycosis with a high incidence in tropical countries and is an important illness in immunocompromised patients. Rhinosporidiosis was classed as a fungal infection but is now considered a protistan parasite that belongs to the class Mesomycetozoea. It is included in this review because of its historical classification. In the past, most of these mycoses were restricted to specific geographic areas and natural reservoirs. There are, however, situations in which people from other regions come in contact with the pathogen. A common situation involves an accidental contamination of a traveler or worker who has contact with a tropical mycosis. Even minor trauma to the skin surface or inhalation of the fungal conidia can infect the patient. Thus recognition of the clinical symptoms and the dermatologic findings of the diseases, as well as the geographic distribution of the pathogens, can be critical in diagnosis of the tropical mycoses. This review discusses some of the more common tropical subcutaneous and systemic mycoses, as well as their signs, symptoms, methods of diagnosis, and therapies. At the completion of this learning activity, participants should be able to recognize the clinical and histologic presentations of tropical fungal diseases with cutaneous manifestations and be familiar with the appropriate therapies.

Melyrid beetles ( Choresine ): A putative source for the batrachotoxin alkaloids found in poison-dart frogs and toxic passerine birds

Batrachotoxins are neurotoxic steroidal alkaloids first isolated from a Colombian poison-dart frog and later found in certain passerine birds of New Guinea. Neither vertebrate group is thought to produce the toxins de novo, but instead they likely sequester them from dietary sources. Here we describe the presence of high levels of batrachotoxins in a little-studied group of beetles, genus Choresine (family Melyridae). These small beetles and their high toxin concentrations suggest that they might provide a toxin source for the New Guinea birds. Stomach content analyses of Pitohui birds revealed Choresine beetles in the diet, as well as numerous other small beetles and arthropods. The family Melyridae is cosmopolitan, and relatives in Colombian rain forests of South America could be the source of the batrachotoxins found in the highly toxic Phyllobates frogs of that region.

South American palaeobotany and the origins of neotropical rainforests

Extant neotropical rainforest biomes are characterized by a high diversity and abundance of angiosperm trees and vines, high proportions of entire-margined leaves, high proportions of large leaves (larger than 4500 mm2), high abundance of drip tips and a suite of characteristic dominant families: Sapotaceae, Lauraceae, Leguminosae (Fabaceae), Melastomataceae and Palmae (Arecaceae). Our aim is to define parameters of extant rainforests that will allow their recognition in the fossil record of South America and to evaluate all known South American plant fossil assemblages for first evidence and continued presence of those parameters. We ask when did these critical rainforest characters arise? When did vegetative parameters reach the level of abundance that we see in neotropical forests? Also, when do specific lineages become common in neotropical forests? Our review indicates that evidence of neotropical rainforest is exceedingly rare and equivocal before the Palaeocene. Even in the Palaeocene, the only evidence for tropical rainforest in South America is the appearance of moderately high pollen diversity. By contrast, North American sites provide evidence that rainforest leaf physiognomy was established early in the Palaeocene. By the Eocene in South America, several lines of evidence suggest that neotropical rainforests were diverse, physiognomically recognizable as rainforest and taxonomically allied to modern neotropical rainforests. A mismatch of evidence regarding the age of origin between sites of palaeobotanical high diversity and sites of predicted tropical climates should be reconciled with intensified collecting efforts in South America. We identify several lines of promising research that will help to coalesce previously disparate approaches to the origin, longevity and maintenance of high diversity floras of South America.

Tropical dermatology: fungal tropical diseases

Fungal infections are very common in tropical countries and can have an important impact in terms of public health. Lobomycosis is the most common fungal infection in the tropical rain forest of South America, and paracoccidioidomycosis (South American blastomycosis) is a widespread and sometimes severe illness. Chromoblastomycosis and mycetomoas are causes of morbidity around the world and rhinosporidiosis a common cause of infection in some areas. Sporotrichosis is a worldwide subcutaneous mycosis with a very high incidence in tropical countries and also an important illness in immunocompromised patients.In the past, most of these mycoses were restricted to very specific geographic areas and natural reservoirs. There are, however, some situations where people from other regions come in contact with the pathogens. A common situation involves accidental contamination of a traveler, tourist, or worker who has contact with a tropical mycosis. Even minor trauma to the skin surface or the inhalation of fungal spores can infect the patient. Thus, recognizing the clinical symptoms and dermatological findings of the diseases, as well as the geographical distribution of the pathogens, can be critical in diagnosing the tropical mycoses. Fungal infections are very common in tropical countries and can have an important impact in terms of public health. Lobomycosis is the most common fungal infection in the tropical rain forest of South America, and paracoccidioidomycosis (South American blastomycosis) is a widespread and sometimes severe illness. Chromoblastomycosis and mycetomoas are causes of morbidity around the world and rhinosporidiosis a common cause of infection in some areas. Sporotrichosis is a worldwide subcutaneous mycosis with a very high incidence in tropical countries and also an important illness in immunocompromised patients. In the past, most of these mycoses were restricted to very specific geographic areas and natural reservoirs. There are, however, some situations where people from other regions come in contact with the pathogens. A common situation involves accidental contamination of a traveler, tourist, or worker who has contact with a tropical mycosis. Even minor trauma to the skin surface or the inhalation of fungal spores can infect the patient. Thus, recognizing the clinical symptoms and dermatological findings of the diseases, as well as the geographical distribution of the pathogens, can be critical in diagnosing the tropical mycoses.

The large impact of gold-mining in total-Hg content in sediment of the dam lake of Petit Saut (French Guiana)

Gold-mining is a major source of Hg pollution, especially in the tropical rain forest of South America. This pollution has been shown to strongly increase the local natural background. Does this pollution extend far beyond the local areas? We present results concerning sediments cored in the large dam lake of Petit-Saut in French Guiana. This dam lake, created in 1994, collects waters from a large catchment area where gold-mining activity has been developing since the last century, and still is. Sediment depth profiles in 210 Pb and in total-Hg revealed a high Hg content in the last 4 years. This can only result from anthropogenic activities, which could be due either to propagation of sediments from gold mining sites, or chemical processes acting in recently flooded soils (both processes being related to the dam creation).

Ectomycorrhizal fungi and their leguminous hosts in the Pakaraima Mountains of Guyana

Ecologically important ectomycorrhizal (EM) associations are poorly known from equatorial rain forests of South America. Recent field studies in the Pakaraima Mountains of western Guyana revealed previously undocumented forests dominated by EM leguminous trees, with a rich assemblage of EM mycobionts. Along transects, basidiomes from 75 species or morphospecies of putatively EM fungi were spatially associated with leguminous host trees. These fungi belonged to the basidiomycete families Boletaceae, Amanitaceae, Russulaceae, Cortinariaceae, Cantharellaceae, Clavulinaceae, and Entolomataceae, all of which are poorly documented from the lowland neotropics. Ectomycorrhizas were confirmed on D. corymbosa, D. altsonii, and D. jenmanii (Caesalpiniaceae, tribe Amherstieae), and a fourth species, Aldina insignis (Papilionaceae). The tribe Amherstieae contains most of the EM leguminous species forming monodominant forests in Guineo-Congolian Africa. Dicymbe species constituted the first record of EM Amherstieae in the New World. A variety of other co-occurring caesalpiniaceous trees failed to exhibit ectomycorrhizas. Transect surveys indicated that D. corymbosa and D. altsonii were: (1) highly clumped and dominant at specific sites; (2) occurred on soils with widely varying chemical and textural characteristics; and (3) the most important hosts for EM fungi in the local landscape. Dicymbe species have life history attributes, including the ectomycorrhizal habit, which enhance their competitive abilities irrespective of soil conditions. The spatial restriction of EM fungal basidiomes indicated that discrete groves of EM trees harbour an important component of regional macromycete diversity.

Handbook of Amazonian Languages. Vol. 4 (review)

Reviewed by: Handbook of Amazonian languages ed. by Desmond C. Derbyshire, Geoffrey K. Pullum Edward Vajda Handbook of Amazonian languages. Vol. 4. Ed. by Desmond C. Derbyshire and Geoffrey K. Pullum. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1998. Pp. ix, 646. This thick book is the first supplement to the Handbook of Amazonian languages (henceforward, HAL) to appear in nearly a decade. Building upon the best tradition of missionary-inspired descriptive linguistic work fostered in connection with Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) activities, editors Desmond Derbyshire and Geoffrey Pullum launched HAL during the mid-1980s as a means of attracting scholarly attention to one of the world’s most persistently ignored linguistic areas. With the appearance of Vol. 4, HAL coverage of the Amazon now increases to three typological studies, four historical-comparative analyses, and ten grammatical descriptions of languages belonging to eight different genetic groupings. Unfortunately, this tally barely begins to approach exhaustive coverage of the region, since the rain forests of South America are home to at least 300 languages divided among about 20 families and two dozen isolates. Nevertheless, given the spate of new publications on Amazonian languages over the past decade, many by linguists with SIL affiliation or who were inspired by exposure to earlier volumes of HAL, the series has clearly achieved the goal of drawing the serious attention of a growing number of linguists to the Amazon. This rapid progress finds clear illustration in the editors’ introduction (3–20), which contains a fairly good overview of the current state of Amazonian linguistics. Before the 1980s, few [End Page 360] Amazonian languages had been described in any detail. Much of this early work had been done by missionaries rather than university linguistics professors, who in many cases were absorbed in debating the latest theoretical formalisms rather than dealing with the exigencies of documenting indigenous languages. Very few serious linguistic articles on the Amazon had yet appeared outside such specialized venues as the International Journal of American Linguistics. More importantly, few linguists at South American universities were actively involved in the documentation or analysis of the region’s indigenous languages. And no Brazilian-born linguist had ever published a monograph on a native Brazilian language. In fact, before the closing years of the twentieth century, the only such book authored by a Brazilian resident was a grammar of Tupinambá (Anchieta 1595), a now extinct Tupí-Guaraní language once widely spoken in coastal Brazil. Sadly, during the ensuing four centuries of near total inactivity, many South American languages vanished unrecorded. The turning point in this unfortunate narrative of scholarly neglect comes during the 1970s, with the appearance of books and articles by D and his SIL colleagues. These include monographs on individual languages such as Hixkaryana (Derbyshire 1979) as well as articles discussing such rare typological features found in the Amazon as object-initial basic word order (Derbyshire 1977). These were followed by the first three volumes of HAL (Derbyshire & Pullum 1986, 1990, 1991), which significantly increased the linguistic data available on the region and for the first time brought together an international collective of linguists, many of whom established a long-term cooperative effort to study the Amazon’s linguistic diversity. During the past decade, this cooperation has produced an accelerating number of publications on Amazonian languages. These include short monographs on two North Arawak languages, the recently extinct Bare (Aikhenvald 1995) and the moribund Tariana (Aikhenvald 1999), as well as an important historical study tracing the evolution of actant agreement typology in Cariban (Gildea 1998). Several other monograph-length studies are now in preparation, some by native-born Brazilian linguists (Seki 2000), others by members of the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology (La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia), where full-length grammars of Tariana (Aikhenvald, 2000) and Jarawara (Dixon & Vogel, 2000) will soon be completed. A particularly bright point for the future of Amazonian linguistics is the ongoing cooperation between Spike Gildea (University of Oregon) and Denny Moore (Museu Goeldi, Belém) which has already resulted in several Brazilian graduate students initiating work on Amazonian linguistics. Perhaps the most important single publication in the field to date, The Amazonian languages (Dixon & Aikhenvald 1999), is also reported...