Mauro Galetti

Early life and education

Galetti was born in Campinas, São Paulo during the Military regime in Brazil. Grandson of a Portuguese immigrant from Madeira Island and son of Physics teacher, Galetti was always influenced by his brother Marcos Rodrigues and his uncle Pedro Manoel Galetti Jr. who are both biologists. He grew up in Campinas, São Paulo until the age of 25 when he moved to Cambridge University for earning the Doctor of Philosophy. Galetti is alumni member of Robinson College. During his childhood he studied in a suburban school until his parents moved him to Imaculada Coração de Maria a prestigious private school. He enrolled in the Biology course at Universidade Estadual de Campinas in 1986. Since his early days in the university he notice that most classes were uninteresting to him so he decided to spend most of his mornings in the forest fragment nearby Mata de Santa Genebra, Campinas, São Paulo. There he start observing and studying howler monkeys, squirrels, and other fruit-eating animals. His first project was to follow a group of howler monkeys from dusk to dawn, but because howlers spend most of their time sleeping, he decide to also study other frugivores in the forest. In the University, he was inspired by his former professors and naturalists Ivan Sazima, Keith Brown, Wesley R. Silva and his former Master supervisor Leonor Patricia Cerdeira Morellato to study deep the interactions between fruits and frugivores in this forest. The small forest fragment near the university was his major laboratory where he spent most of his mornings watching birds and mammals eating fruits.

In 1988, Galetti attended a talk by the Mexican ecologist Rodolfo Dirzo, who present for the first time his ideas about the impact of defaunation on plant communities. This talk influence him for the rest of his career.

Galetti's decided to apply for studying abroad while still in the third year, but did not received the fellowship because the Brazilian Science Foundation CNPq ask him to do master's degree first. He enrolled in the Master program at Universidade Estadual de Campinas in 1990 and by August 1992 (after 18 months) he received a Master in Science diploma and move to Cambridge in September 1992.

Career

Galetti got his PhD at University of Cambridge in 1992. In Cambridge, Galetti's was supervised by the primatologist David J. Chivers. At this time Galetti met a young primatologist Carlos A. Peres who influence him to study keystone species instead of primates. He decide to test the concept of keystone species in tropical forests for the first time, comparing the abundance of fruit-eating birds and mammals in areas with dense population of palms Euterpe edulis with neighbor sites without palms. During the last year in Cambridge he spend a week in Seville with Pedro Jordano that changed his life. Jordano was a young scientist expert in frugivory and seed dispersal who took Galetti to Sierra de Cazorla and teach him about the Mediterranean ecosystems. Before coming back to Brazil, Galetti's moved to Barito Ulu project in Kalimantan, Indonesia. He was decided to spend a year studying for the first time seed dispersal by hornbills and sunbears, but after 3 months, a civil war irrupted in Indonesia and he decided to return to Brazil. He was one of the first ecologists to study toucans and hornbills in the wild.

After a year in Borneo he move back to Brazil and became a Professor at Universidade Estadual Paulista in 1998.

He was a Visiting Scientists at Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas in Seville in 2007 and Thinker Professor at Stanford University from 2008-2009 at Center for Latin American Studies. During his period in Stanford, he was associated with Professor Rodolfo Dirzo, the father of defaunation ideas. In 2013, his paper was Highly Recommended by the Faculty of 1000

Galetti was the pioneer in publishing about rewilding, particularly after visiting Kruger National Park in South Africa. The realized that most of the Brazilian cerrado is a Pleistocene megafauna defaunated ecosystem.

Galetti has written on ecology for a number of journals including Science, PLOS ONE and Biological Conservation and his contribution has been much debated by public media. Galetti has published more than 100 papers in 22 years of career and is the Editor of Biological Conservation for Latin America

Selected publications

Dirzo, R., H. S. Young, M. Galetti, G. Ceballos, N. J. B. Isaac, and B. Collen. 2014. Defaunation in the Anthropocene. Science 345:401-406.

Galetti, M., R. Guevara, M. C. Cortes, R. Fadini, S. Von Matter, A. B. Leite, F. Labecca, T. Ribeiro, C. S. Carvalho, R. G. Collevatti, M. M. Pires, P. R. Guimaraes, P. H. Brancalion, M. C. Ribeiro, and P. Jordano. 2013. Functional Extinction of Birds Drives Rapid Evolutionary Changes in Seed Size. Science 340:1086-1090.

Galetti, M., E. Eizirik, B. Beisiegel, K. Ferraz, S. Cavalcanti, A. C. Srbek-Araujo, P. Crawshaw, A. Paviolo, P. M. Galetti, Jr., M. L. Jorge, J. Marinho-Filho, U. Vercillo, and R. Morato. 2013. Atlantic Rainforest's Jaguars in Decline. Science 342:930-930.

Galetti, M. and R. Dirzo. 2013. Ecological and evolutionary consequences of living in a defaunated world. Biological Conservation 163:1-6.

Bueno, R. S., R. Guevara, M. C. Ribeiro, L. Culot, F. S. Bufalo, and M. Galetti. 2013. Functional Redundancy and Complementarities of Seed Dispersal by the Last Neotropical Megafrugivores. Plos One 8:e56252.

Hansen, D. M. and M. Galetti. 2009. The forgotten megafauna. Science 324:42-43.

Galetti, M., H. C. Giacomini, R. S. Bueno, C. S. S. Bernardo, R. M. Marques, R. S. Bovendorp, C. E. Steffler, P. Rubim, S. K. Gobbo, C. I. Donatti, R. A. Begotti, F. Meirelles, R. d. A. Nobre, A. G. Chiarello, and C. A. Peres. 2009. Priority areas for the conservation of Atlantic forest large mammals. Biological Conservation 142:1229-1241.

Honors and awards