invertebrates in environmental assessments: A decade of environmental impact studies in the influence area of the Atlantic Rainforest in Rio State, Brazil

. Invertebrates constitute a megadiverse animal group and abundant in virtually every terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem, performing functions and providing services indispensable to the environment. In this paper, we evaluated how terrestrial invertebrates were treated in the Environmental Impact Assessments submitted to the environmental agency in Rio de Janeiro, state fully inserted at Atlantic Rainforest biome. We analyzed environmental studies developed by companies with new industrial projects presenting potential environmental impact in the period of 2008 to 2018. Only ten (14%) studies considered terrestrial invertebrates in the biotic diagnostic assessments of fauna. Arthropoda was the only one Phylum considered as terrestrial invertebrates in the studies analyzed, with Class Insecta present in all of them, and Arachnida present in two studies. The insects of the Orders Diptera, Hymenoptera, Coleoptera, Lepidopetra, Hemipetra, Orthopetra and Odonata were the most frequent in the studies. The lack of interest in the conservation of terrestrial invertebrates demonstrates the fragility of the public authorities in issues related to biodiversity conservation strategies of these animals and exposes the urgent need for investment in the formation of human resources specialized in biodiversity conservation.


Introduction
From the 1970s, countries began to consider on their public policies the focus on preventing environmental problems. In Brazil, the consolidation of preventive environmental management instruments was only highlighted with the publication of the National Environmental Policy in 1981 (Almeida, 2015). This policy instituted the Environmental Impact Study (EIA) as an instrument of control and prevention of environmental risks associated to the industrial processes necessary for the environmental licensing of all activities capable of cause significant environmental degradation. The elaboration of EIA became required to authorizes the location, installation, expansion and operation of ventures and activities that use environmental resources, which are actually or potentially polluting or capable, in any way, of causing environmental degradation (Brasil, 1986).
The objective of the EIA is to describe the environmental impacts arising from the implementation of projects and it must present the environmental diagnosis of the influence area of the venture, considering the physical environment (soil, subsoil, surface and groundwater, climate, etc.), the socioeconomic environment (use and land occupation, archaeological sites, economics, education, health etc.) and the biological environment (ecosystems, flora, fauna, etc.), environmental impact analysis, mitigation and compensatory measures and environmental programs (Brasil, 1981;Brasil, 1997, Attanasio Jr., 2015. In the environmental diagnosis, the biotic assessment is related to biological and ecological aspects of populations and communities. Faunal surveys demand specialists in various zoological groups, usually ornithologists (birds), mastozoologists (mammals), herpetologists (reptiles and amphibians), ichthyologists (fish) and, eventually entomologists (insects) (Garcia and Candiani, 2017). The species are normally categorized according to degree of sensitivity to anthropic interference, dependence on forest environments, endemism, identification of endangered Rev. Bras. Gest. Amb. Sustent., 2019, vol. 6, n. 14, p. 1039-1050. species and rare and bioindicator species.
The effectiveness of the EIA in decision making has been criticized by several authors (Oliveira and Bursztyn, 2001;O'Faircheallaigh, 2010;Almeida et al., 2016;Almeida et al., 2019). Among the criticisms pointed out is the low quality of environmental studies designed to obtain licenses, which contributes to the delay in decision making, as well as by making the wrong decisions. One of the reasons for criticism in the EIAs is regarding to the fauna survey. Quantitative faunal surveys such as population censuses are rare because they require field effort and time by specialists, rarely available in the completion of the EIAs (Sánchez, 2013). The main problems encountered in the EIAs are the lack of identification of breeding areas and lack of information related to behavior aspects, ecological interactions, key and bioindicator species (Sherer, 2011), as well as methodological problems, ranging from lack of experts to poor experimental design, selection of methods and the absence of methodological standardization in driving of faunal inventories in EIAs (Wegner et al., 2005;Thompson, 2007;Duarte et al., 2017;Lacy et al., 2017).
In this paper, we evaluated how terrestrial invertebrates have been treated in the EIAs submitted to the environmental agency in Rio de Janeiro, under the domain of the Atlantic Rainforest biome. Given the high diversity of terrestrial invertebrates and the importance of these animals drive in ecosystems, our specific goals were (1) to identify the terrestrial invertebrate groups considered in the studies, (2) to evaluate data collection methods, and (3) to promote discussion of invertebrate's conservation.

Materials and methods
To evaluate how the terrestrial invertebrates have been treated in the environmental impact studies, we analyzed the information submitted and available in the database of the Instituto Estadual do Ambiente do Rio de Janeiro (INEA), an organ of the State of Rio de Janeiro Government, linked to the State Secretariat of Environment and agency responsible for environmental licensing at the state level.
In this analysis we included environmental studies developed by companies with new industrial projects presenting potential environmental impact and we evaluated the studies submitted to the INEA from 2008 to 2018, comprising a decade of database in all state territory.
The focus of the analysis in the environmental studies was the section of diagnosis of the biotic environment, which consist in the flora and ecosystems, where we collected information about the phytophysiognomic formations of influence areas of the future enterprises and, mainly, in fauna, where we analyzed the animal groups that were considered in the studies, as well as the methodologies that the authors used to obtain the data.
Rio de Janeiro state is fully inserted in the Atlantic Rainforest biome and currently the forest remnants occupy about 20,9% of the total area of the state, represented for the diverse ecosystems associated with the biome: dense ombrophylous forest, deciduous forest, seasonal forest semideciduous (or "Mata de Tabuleiros"), mangroves, restingas, altitude fields and swamps (Fundação SOS Mata Atlântica e INPE, 2017). Knowing how fauna is represented in environmental impact studies helps in the development of biodiversity conservation strategies in areas affected by industrial projects. Thus, the conservation of biodiversity in the influenced areas of these projects in Rio de Janeiro state represents a major challenge due to the high level of fragmentation of the Atlantic Rainforest biome. Most of the remnants are in small fragments, poor known and not protected, mostly inserted in intensely 1042 Esteves e Paz Rev. Bras. Gest. Amb. Sustent., 2019, vol. 6, n. 14, p. 1039-1050. anthropized landscapes (Fidalgo et al., 2007). Regarding the fauna evaluated in the EIAs, the central question of this analysis was: Have terrestrial invertebrates been considered in environmental assessments?
The analyzed EIAs included public and private projects, new and expanding, prepared by different consulting firms and encompassing industrial activities of dam, construction, energy, hospitality, infrastructure, allotment, mining, naval, oil and gas, ports, steel industry and waste treatment, in all regions of the Rio de Janeiro State.

Results
We analyzed 71 environmental impact studies of industrial projects in municipalities in all administrative regions of the Rio de Janeiro state. Only ten studies (14%) considered terrestrial invertebrates in the biotic diagnostic assessments of fauna ( Figure 1). Among the ten environmental impact studies that considered terrestrial invertebrates in the faunal surveys, two studies were related to the construction activity, one of energy, one of infrastructure, one of mining, one of naval, one related to port and three related to landfills. These projects are in the Municipalities of Barra Mansa, Campos dos Goytacazes, Cantagalo, Itaboraí, Itaguaí, Macaé, Maricá and Rio de Janeiro (Table 1).

Discussion
Invertebrates constitute an animal group megadiverse and abundant in virtually every terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem, performing functions and providing services indispensable to the environment (Schowalter, 2006). Food webs fauna in the soil, for example, may affect positively cycling nutrients through fragmentation of organic matter and stimulate proliferation of decomposing organisms (Lavelle et al., 1993;Gartner and Cardon, 2004). Such a process, in turn allows the maintenance of the fertility of soils and primary productivity in ecosystems (Wardle, 1999). Invertebrates are agents of flower pollination (Isaacs et al., 2008;Pinheiro et al., 2008), seed dispersal and predation (Parr et al., 2007;Lomov et al., 2009), which are essential plant reproduction and distribution. In addition, constitute food resources of several other animals (Gunnarsson, 2008) and act (in the case of predators and parasitoids) in the control of agricultural pests Gardiner et al., 2009).
Even though invertebrates are a megadiverse group, our results showed that less than 15% of environmental impact studies submitted to the state environmental agency in the Rio de Janeiro considered terrestrial invertebrates. The low percentage shows that terrestrial invertebrates have been neglected in environmental impact studies, which implies the effective management of the biodiversity conservation in ecosystems dominated by the Atlantic Rainforest, considered a hot spot of global biodiversity. The lack of knowledge of terrestrial invertebrate fauna, that is affected by industrial projects, limits the elaboration of conservationist strategies which impact the whole ecosystem.
The inventory must contain a complete description of fauna and flora, taking into account ecological interactions, and that there are two methods for this characterization: the qualitative one, which consists mainly of evaluating the richness of the species of the community, and the quantitative, which has as its main objective the analysis of the number of species and their population size (Silveira, 2006). A major problem with inventory surveys is the lack of information on invertebrate animals, which do not provide insight into the completeness of the complex interaction of local biodiversity.
Normally in surveys, EIAs select the taxa to be sampled and almost always choose birds and mammals in fauna and flora, tree species, which considerably limits the quality of the studies, especially regarding biodiversity and interactions between species in a given ecosystem (Santos, 2003). In general, and especially in Brazil, the description of invertebrate biodiversity in biological communities has been restricted to classical quantitative aspects such as taxa composition, richness indices, equitability and morphospecies diversity, such as Simpson and Shannon Wiener (Corrêa et al., 2006;Podgaiski et al., 2007;Campos et al., 2009). Although traditional, these taxonomic indicators assume an equal functional weight for all species in the community, regardless of their characteristics, requirements and functions.
This results revealed that only the arthropod group was identified in environmental impact studies considering terrestrial invertebrate fauna. The insects were the most representative, being considered in all studies that surveyed the invertebrate fauna. Spiders and scorpions were considered in less than 3% of studies. Over a decade's time, environmental impact studies of industrial projects with potential environmental impact on Atlantic Rainforest ecosystems have disregarded the megadiversity of terrestrial invertebrates, so abundantly present in the Atlantic Rainforest ecosystems. The invertebrate animals are distributed by 33 Phylum (number that may vary depending on the adopted classification), gathering 95% of the known species (MMA, 2000). The other 5% belong to a single Phylum, the Vertebrates. Most invertebrate Phylum are exclusively marine, some are predominantly marine and the rest predominantly terrestrial. The arthropods that our results revealed to be the only invertebrates considered in the environmental impact studies constitute only one of the terrestrial invertebrate group, which is still constitute by Acanthocephala, Tardigrada, Onychophora, Platyhelminthes, Nematoda, Annelida and Mollusca. Due in part to its megadiversity in the world's diverse ecosystems, terrestrial invertebrate fauna remains to some extent unknown; it is estimated that potentially over 80% of existing arthropod species are not taxonomically described (Hammond, 1992;Redak, 2000). This lack of information is more restricted to some regions and/or taxa to the detriment of others (Barratt et al., 2003) and, especially in Brazil, has been attributed to the lack of sampling and especially taxonomist (Brandão et al., 2003).
Our results indicated that the most used method of obtaining the data in the analyzed environmental impact studies was the collection of secondary data, through the specialized literature review (bibliographic survey). The bibliographic survey was performed considering the places of installation of the industrial projects. The secondary data survey also considered information on terrestrial invertebrate species deposited in Zoological Collections for the same areas. The main shortcoming of secondary data for faunal inventories in environmental impact studies is due to the precariousness of information available. There is a strong relationship between the arthropods considered in the analyzed studies and the number of published studies on insects in the industrial project areas: in the few studies that considered terrestrial invertebrates, they were considered insects only because these animals have the most published studies. On the other hand, invertebrates with scarce published studies were not considered in environmental assessments, for example Annelida and Mollusca. The authors' lack of interest in carrying out fieldwork for the effective survey of terrestrial invertebrate fauna in environmental impact studies reinforces the need to improve methodological procedures 1048 Esteves e Paz Rev. Bras. Gest. Amb. Sustent., 2019, vol. 6, n. 14, p. 1039-1050. aimed at completing the qualification of fauna present in the study area.
Conservation initiatives have evolved from focusing on species or groups of species threatened by various factors for a more comprehensive approach in which the effects of species sets are examined, or even of certain species, about processes of ecosystems. With this shift in emphasis, species are approached not only as subjects affected by environmental conditions or changes, but also as agents that modify or oppose such changes (Lewinsohn, 2005). Comparative studies of soil organisms under different conditions or regimes offer clear opportunities to assess the effects of changes in wealth or in the composition of species on ecosystems but, few investigations have set out to go so far. However, the importance of such analyzes for conservation is becoming more apparent as the maintenance of functional ecological entities is perceived as a prerequisite for conservation in long term.

Conclusion
The State of Rio de Janeiro is fully inserted in the Atlantic Rainforest, a biome considered a hot spot of global biodiversity, which houses a great diversity of fauna and flora. In the present analysis, environmental impact studies were evaluated during a decade of implementation of industrial projects. Less than 15% of environmental impact studies submitted to the state environmental agency considered terrestrial invertebrates. Among the studies that considered terrestrial invertebrates, only arthropods were listed. Considering only arthropods, the authors neglected other groups of terrestrial invertebrates important for environmental health, such as Annelida and Mollusca. The lack of interest in the conservation of terrestrial invertebrates demonstrates the fragility of the public authorities in issues related to biodiversity conservation strategies and exposes the urgent need for investment in the formation of human resources specialized in biodiversity conservation, especially of the terrestrial invertebrate groups that are forgotten in the environmental management agenda. Rev