Landscape species for conservation planning: are muriquis good candidates for the Brazilian Atlantic, Forest?

Over the last decades, different approaches have been proposed. to achieve biodiversity protection. Landscape-species seems to be a promising one, in which a suite of complementary species, presenting great and heterogeneous requirements and socio-economic importance, are selected to guide landscape management, targeting biodiversity conservation. However, in many important areas, biodiversity data needed to identify target species for each conservation area is deficient or inexistent. We suggest that a landscape-species approach could be used in poorly known and threatened areas, based on the best-studied candidates for landscape species. Muriquis (Brachyteles) are probably the best-known large vertebrate in the Atlantic Forest, with ecological traits such as large area requirement and socio-ecological importance, compatible with those required for a species to be listed as a. landscape species. Other attributes, such as endemicity; charisma and affiliate behavior, in addition to the structure of ongoing projects on muriqui research, point. muriquis as good candidates to start local and regional conservation plans based on landscape species in the Atlantic Forest biome, improving research and management of other complementary species.,