New Records of the Endangered Chacoan Peccary Catagonus Wagneri Suggest a Broader Distribution Than Formerly Known

New records of the Endangered Chacoan peccary Catagonus wagneri suggest a broader distribution than formerly known

R ICARDO T ORRES,DANIELA T AMBURINI,JULIÁN L ESCANO and E NZO R OSSI

Abstract The Chacoan peccary Catagonus wagneri is the far north of Santiago del Estero provinces in Argentina, rarest and most threatened of the three extant species of pec- and east of Tarija and south of Santa Cruz (and probably cary. Its presence has been recorded in the northern Dry east of Chuquisaca) provinces in Bolivia (Mayer & Wetzel, Chaco ecoregion, which spans northern Argentina, western ; Taber, ; Chébez, ; Maffei et al., ; Fig. ). Paraguay and south-eastern Bolivia. However, distribution Thus the known distribution of the species is restricted to models based on its occurrence in Argentina have predicted the north and centre of the driest portion of the Chaco eco- that suitable habitat extends southwards into central region. However, distribution models fitted only with occur- Argentina, where the species was not previously recorded. rence localities from Argentina (Torres & Jayat, ) We present several records of the species outside the cur- showed that suitable habitats extended further south to rently accepted distribution, including the first two records the province of Córdoba in central Argentina. Here we pre- in the west of Córdoba province, .  km south of the sent the first two records of the Chacoan peccary in the southern limit of the previously known distribution. The province of Córdoba and report several records  km or discovery of the Chacoan peccary in central Argentina more beyond the limits of the currently accepted distribu- could serve as a justification for the protection of Chacoan tion (represented by the IUCN polygon, i.e. the polygon de- forests in this region, where deforestation rates are among picting the distributional area according to the criteria of the highest worldwide. IUCN experts; Altrichter et al., ). The first record from Córdoba is a skull of an adult of un- Keywords Argentina, Catagonus wagneri, Chaco, Chacoan known sex hunted in  in the west of the province, c.  km peccary, Córdoba, Tayassuidae west of El Cadillo, which we collected on  March  and To view supplementary material for this article, please visit later deposited in the Mammal Collection of the Museo de http://dx.doi.org/./S Zoología of the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (Supplementary Material ). The skull was incomplete, lack- ing the lower jaw, but most of the cranial diagnostic charac- mong the three extant species of peccary the ters (Mayer & Wetzel, ) were evident: rostrum and nasal AEndangered Chacoan peccary Catagonus wagneri chambers more pronounced, a proportionately smaller brain- (Altrichter et al., ) is the rarest and the most threatened. case, a deeper zygomatic bar below the orbit, and a more pos- The species was first described by Rusconi (), as a sub- terior position of the orbit (with its anterior edge located well fossil, and was rediscovered as an extant species in Paraguay posterior to the last molar) than in the other peccary species; by Wetzel et al. (). Later, the presence of the Chacoan the infraorbital foramen well anterior to the zygomatic arch; peccary was confirmed in the Paraguayan departments of and the lack of a pronounced articular fossa on the anterior Boquerón, Alto Paraguay and west of Presidente Hayes, in face of the zygomatic arch (Plate ). On  July  we photo- western Formosa, northern Chaco, eastern Salta and the graphed a skull of an individual that had been hunted in Estancia Pinas in ,c. km from the locality of the first record (Plate ). Both records were c.  km south-west RICARDO TORRES (Corresponding author) Museo de Zoología, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Av. of the IUCN polygon. The individuals were hunted in sec- Vélez Sarsfield 299 (5000) Córdoba, Argentina. E-mail [email protected] ondary forests typical of the southernmost Dry Chaco eco- DANIELA TAMBURINI and ENZO ROSSI Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas y region (sensu Olson et al., ), with Aspidosperma Tecnológicas (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas) quebracho-blanco as the emergent tree, Prosopis flexuosa, and Centro de Ecología y Recursos Naturales Renovables, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Cercidium praecox and Ziziphus mistol dominant in the Córdoba, Argentina tree stratum, Celtis ehrenbergiana, Larrea divaricata, JULIÁN LESCANO Instituto de Diversidad y Ecología Animal (Consejo Nacional de Mymozyganthus carinatus, Acacia furcatispina, Acacia prae- Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas) and Centro de Zoología Aplicada, cox, Opuntia sulphurea and Opuntia quimilo as the main Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Córdoba, Argentina components of the shrub stratum, and Deinacanthon urba- Received  September . Revision requested  October . nianum as the most abundant grass in the herbaceous stra- Accepted  December . First published online  March . tum (Cabido et al., ).

Oryx, 2017, 51(2), 286–289 © 2016 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605315001404 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.19, on 03 Oct 2021 at 13:22:41, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605315001404 Distribution of the Chacoan peccary 287

PLATE 1 Lateral, ventral and dorsal views of the skulls of a Chacoan peccary Catagonus wagneri (MZUC-I) hunted  km west of El Cadillo, in the province of Córdoba in central Argentina (left) and of a collared peccary Pecari tajacu (MZUC-I) from La Paquita, in the province of Córdoba (right).

FIG. 1 Distribution of occurrence localities of the Chacoan does not have a local name despite its striking appearance peccary Catagonus wagneri from museum collections and the suggests the Chacoan peccary is not necessarily a recent literature (circles), and the two new records reported here immigrant. (triangles). The Dry Chaco ecoregion is shaded in dark grey and We searched for records of the Chacoan peccary in mu- the Humid Chaco in light grey. The IUCN polygon (Altrichter seum collections and in the literature (Supplementary  et al., ) is delimited by a dashed line, representing the Material ), and used maps, gazetteers and Google Earth currently accepted range. Sub-national political boundaries are indicated only in those countries where the Chacoan peccary is (Google Inc., Mountain View, USA) to determine their geo- present. SC, Santa Cruz; CQ, Chuquisaca; TA, Tarija; AP, Alto graphical location. Museum databases often include the Paraguay; BO, Boquerón; PH, Presidente Hayes; JU, Jujuy; SA, geographical coordinates of records, but locations are Salta; FO, Formosa; CH, Chaco; SE, Santiago del Estero; TU, often approximate. We revised and improved these data Tucumán; CA, Catamarca; LR, La Rioja; CO, Córdoba; SL, San for almost all records. We found a total of  presence local- Luis. ities for the species, attributable to a given location with an error ,  arc-minutes. Two localities were within the Humid Chaco (Fig. ),  (%) were outside the IUCN These findings were part of the results of  semi- polygon, and six (%) were .  km from the polygon structured interviews (Guber, ; Valles, ) that we limits, including our new records in Córdoba (Fig. ). conducted during March–August  in seven rural com- Our findings highlight the need for further field research  munities in an area of  km in the west and north-west of and biodiversity inventories in central Argentina, particu- Córdoba province to gather information about the Chacoan larly in areas with Chaco forests. This is also an example peccary. Questions focused on the respondents’ ability to of the value of local knowledge to researchers. Local people distinguish the species, knowledge about its habits, and fre- have long known of the presence of the Chacoan peccary in quency of sightings. Seventy-two percent of the respondents central Argentina, and its presence should not be surprising mentioned this peccary species (known locally as chancho given that the environment in western and northern moro) as part of the local fauna. They were able to distin- Córdoba is similar to that described for the species. In an- guish this species from the collared peccary Pecari tajacu, other example, the Chacoan naked-tailed armadillo the only peccary species previously recorded in Córdoba Cabassous chacoensis was recorded in central-western (Morando & Polop, ). They described it as a long-haired Argentina, far from the nearest known presence locality in species, and bigger, faster and less gregarious (solitary or in the north of the country (Tamburini & Briguera,  and pairs) than the collared peccary; all these characteristics are references therein), although the species and its biology in agreement with the description of the Chacoan peccary. are well known by local inhabitants, who have historically The fact that another species recorded recently in the same used it as food. area, the lesser anteater Tamandua tetradactyla (Torres Although there is no information about the existence of et al., ), was recognized by only two respondents and the Chacoan peccary in the area between Córdoba and the

Nacional de Ciencia y Técnica, Argentina (FONCyT, PICT No. -) and Secretaría de Ciencia y Tecnología, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina (Grant N° –).

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