Veronicellidae, um grupo negligenciado? Análise cienciométrica da pesquisa sobre a família Veronicellidae, no Brasil

Abstract

The Veronicellidae family includes terrestrial gastropods devoid of shells, popularly known as slugs. This group is widely distributed throughout Brazil, comprising the only native slugs in the country. These organisms tend to be underrepresented in collections and museums due to the difficulty of preservation and this can be an impediment to further studies with the group. In the present study, a scientometric analysis was performed based on data obtained from the Lattes / CNPq Platform to assess the training of human resources and the bibliographic production with Veronicellidae in Brazil compared to the general context of research with terrestrial molluscs. For this we search 8 keywords: Veronicellidae, Pulmonata, Terrestrial molluscs, Terrestrial gastropods, Land snails, Land slugs, terrestrial mollusks and terrestrial gastropods. We analyzed 78 papers on Veronicellidae, which were published between 1965 and 2019. The number of publications suffered a sharp reduction from 2010 to 2020, unlike the pattern observed for general analysis of terrestrial mollusks, in which there is an exponential increase in the number of publications. The researcher José Willibaldo Thomé was part of 52 of the 78 works and his death, in 2016, coincides with the period of abrupt decline in the number of publications and indicates that he had an expressive role as one of the few specialists, taxonomists and advisors of Veronicellidae in Brazil. Regarding the categories, 39 articles are from taxonomy. As for the analysis on the profile of researchers and training of human resources, 86 researchers have some performance or production on Veronicellidae, 26 (30.26%) produced works of course completion, master's dissertations, doctoral theses and / or postgraduate projects. doctorate involving veronicellids, in only one level of training (15 researchers); two levels of training (8) and three levels of training (3). Among these, only eight researchers (30.76%) continued to carry out research on the family after obtaining the corresponding academic title. Thus, the results confirm the existence of taxonomic impediment, due to the incipient formation of specialists dedicated to the study of this group.