Introduction

The Graduate Program in Biodiversity and Nature Conservation of the Federal University of Juiz de Fora started in 2020 as a result of the merger of the Graduate Program in Biological Sciences (Zoology): Animal Behavior and Biology and the Graduate Program in Ecology, both at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora.

The Graduate Program in Biodiversity offers Master’s and PhD degrees, both with concept 4-CAPES, which aim to provide the theoretical and practical basis for the development of teaching, research and extension activities in the most different areas that represent research lines: Taxonomy, Systematics and Evolution; Behavior and Biomonitoring; and Ecological Processes and Nature Conservation.

The Program aims to train and qualify professionals to act as researchers and teachers of higher education. This objective is achieved through the expansion and deepening of knowledge, stimulation of creative capacity and improvement of professional training.

Through its courses, the Program seeks to provide subsidies for the scientific and technological development of the country while seeking the conservation of ecosystems in all their complexity. Aware of its mission to train professionals with conceptual and applied problem-solving skills concerning the Environmental Sciences, the Graduate Program in Biodiversity aims at the qualification of professionals trained to face environmental problems equipped with well-founded conceptual tools and techniques, and the promotion of ecological research, either in the ecosystem aspect, or in the community/population approach in terms of description and conservation of Biodiversity, guided by desires for greater consistency in the use of natural resources.