Assessment of the Rarity and Conservation Status of the Colombian Endemic Brown Hairy Dwarf Porcupine Coendou Vestitus
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Assessment of the rarity and conservation status of the Colombian endemic brown hairy dwarf porcupine Coendou vestitus M ARÍA M. TORRES-MARTÍNEZ,HÉCTOR E. RAMÍREZ-CHAVES E LKIN A. NOGUERA-URBANO and F ERNANDO C. PASSOS Abstract The brown hairy dwarf porcupine Coendou vesti- Introduction tus is a poorly studied Andean species endemic to Colombia. Its current Red List category is contradictory: globally it is he brown hairy dwarf porcupine Coendou vestitus is categorized as Data Deficient but in Colombia it is cate- Tone of the rarest of the seven species of porcupines gorized as Vulnerable. This contradiction has limited the im- (genus Coendou) that occur in Colombia (Ramírez-Chaves – – plementation of conservation programmes. We evaluate et al., ). It is a small species (head body length the level of rarity of the species and provide consolidated mm), characterized by having three types of fur: long information for a new assessment of its Red List status. We dorsal fur, bicolored defensive fur, and bristles (Voss, ). reviewed literature, photographs, and voucher specimens Since its description more than a century ago (Thomas, in natural history collections. Using the confirmed records, ), it has been recorded from only six localities. we estimated the extent of occurrence (EOO) based on This species is considered endemic to both sides of the the minimum convex polygon and the area of occupancy Eastern Cordillera in the Colombian Andes, which is a (AOO) summing the area of grid squares occupied by the complex ecosystem with topographical and biological di- species. We found that C. vestitus is very rare, with a small versity and high levels of endemism (Olson & Dinerstein, range, low estimated population density, occurrence in only ; Armenteras et al., ; Sánchez-Cuervo et al., ). one habitat type and small body size. The species has an Andean ecosystems are a global conservation priority as EOO of , km and an AOO of km , based on six only % of their original extent remains (Armenteras confirmed localities, all on the western slopes of the East- et al., ). ern Cordillera, in the central Andean region of Colombia. Although C. vestitus is considered rare (Ramírez-Chaves Based on the species’ rarity, restricted distribution, and et al., ), this condition has not been evaluated, and it has threats to its natural habitat, we recommend its categoriza- been suggested based only on the absence of data and the tion as Endangered on the IUCN Red List. This will help paucity of voucher specimens. Information on the ecology, delineate research and conservation efforts for this porcu- genetics, natural history and conservation status of the spe- pine, which has a highly restricted range and inhabits the cies is also scarce, and in the case of the latter, contradic- threatened Andean forest. tory. This porcupine is categorized as Data Deficient on the IUCN Red List (Weksler et al., ), with the assessment Keywords Andes, Coendou vestitus, Colombia, Endan- considering the presence of the species from only two local- gered, porcupine, threat category, voucher specimen ities, although in the same assessment three localities were mentioned. Nationally, the species has been categorized as Vulnerable based on its reduced geographical range as a re- MARÍA M. TORRES-MARTÍNEZ (Corresponding author, orcid.org/0000-0002- sult of habitat loss and fragmentation (Amori & Gippoliti, 5892-0788) Programa de Pós-graduação em Ecologia e Conservação, ; Alberico & Moreno, ; MADS, ). Currently, Laboratório de Biodiversidade, Conservação e Ecologia de Animais Silvestres, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Setor de Ciências Biológicas, Postal box it is the only porcupine species categorized as threatened 19031, CEP 81531-990, Curitiba, Brazil in Colombia (Alberico & Moreno, ). Here, based on E-mail [email protected] available literature, specimens in natural history museums HÉCTOR E. RAMÍREZ-CHAVES ( orcid.org/0000-0002-2454-9482) Departamento and collections, and data from recent records, we evaluate de Ciencias Biológicas, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, and Centro de Museos, Museo de Historia Natural, Universidad de Caldas, Manizales, the level of rarity of the species and reassess its conserva- Colombia tion status. ELKIN A. NOGUERA-URBANO ( orcid.org/0000-0002-4391-4852) Instituto de Investigación de Recursos Biológicos, Alexander von Humboldt, Bogotá, Colombia Methods FERNANDO C. PASSOS ( orcid.org/0000-0002-8994-3130) Programa de Pós- graduação em Ecologia e Conservação, Laboratório de Biodiversidade, Conservação e Ecologia de Animais Silvestres, Universidade Federal do Assessing rarity Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil Received May . Revision requested June . To evaluate the rarity of the species we followed the crite- Accepted August . First published online November . ria of Yu & Dobson (), based on four characteristics: This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, Downloadeddistribution, from https://www.cambridge.org/core and reproduction in any medium,. IP address: provided 170.106.35.93 the original work, onis 26 properly Sep 2021 cited. at 11:13:47, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/termsOryx, 2021, 55(5), 765–770 ©. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605319001029The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605319001029 766 M. M. Torres‐Martínez et al. () local population density, ()range,() the number of habi- overlap of the AOO and EOO with protected areas, we esti- tat types in which the species occurs and () body size. In mated the extent (km ) of protected areas inside the EOO addition, we suggest factors that may have determined the polygon using as a limit the elevational range of the species, rarity category of this species. As the species population den- and determined the number of confirmed localities inside sity has not been assessed, we documented the number of protected areas. records per year since the species description. We con- sider the population density to be low if the number of records evaluated is , for each -year interval Results (there are c. , records of mammals in databases for Rarity Our findings indicate that C. vestitus matches the Cundinamarca, the department in which C. vestitus has criteria of an extremely rare species (Category H; Yu & been historically recorded). We also estimated the species Dobson, ), based on all four factors evaluated. range and related this to the rarity level using the extent of occurrence (EOO) and area of occupancy (AOO). We calculated the EOO using the minimum convex polygon Population density From the description of C. vestitus to (linking the known points of occurrence for the species), the present, we found only voucher specimens and photo- and the AOO by summing the area of grid squares in graphs of three living specimens. Three records had no which the species is known (using grid squares of km as precise locality information. The records date from the recommended in IUCN, )inGeoCAT (Bachman et al., species description in to photographic records from ). For this we used data from six confirmed localities. Cundinamarca in (Plate , Table ). The scarcity of re- Three of these are voucher specimens housed at Colombian cords suggests a low population density, considering that collections and the other three are photographic records several biological expeditions have visited the area in (Table ). The photographs showed characters used to differ- which the species occurs (Cundinamarca is the Depart- entiate C. vestitus from other species in this genus: dorsal ment in which Bogotá, the capital of Colombia and home pelage with long blackish fur that partially or completely of the main Colombian academic institutions, is located). conceals defensive quills, and bicoloured bristle-quills (Voss & da Silva, ; Voss, ; Plate ). We excluded the record Range It has been suggested that the elevational range of ICN from our analyses because the specimen was C. vestitus is ,–, m (Barthelmess, ), –, m transported from another locality in the western part of the (Alberico et al., )and–, m (Ramírez-Chaves et al., Eastern Cordillera; the location on the label of the specimen ). However, based on the information from confirmed is in a market area (Alberico & Moreno, ). localities, and discarding a dubious record from Villavicencio, We also considered the number of habitats occupied by the elevational range appears to be from , m (Cundina- the species. For this, we overlaid the EOO on the ecoregions marca, Quipile) to , m (Cundinamarca, Chicaque). The of Colombia, following the classification of terrestrial eco- estimated area of the species range is based on only six con- regions (Olson et al., ). We evaluated body size based on firmed localities (Table , Fig. ), with an estimated EOO of information from the labels of the reviewed voucher speci- , km and an AOO of km . mens and from the literature (Voss, ; Ramírez-Chaves et al., ), and compared this trait with other species of Coendou. Number of habitat types in which the species occurs Overlaying the EOO on the terrestrial ecoregions map indi- cated that the species only occurs in tropical moist broadleaf Conservation status forest (Olson et al., ). This ecoregion corresponds to the To reassess the species conservation status, we used in- highly threatened sub-Andean and Andean forests. formation on the level of rarity, EOO and AOO (IUCN, ). We included the level of rarity and the ecoregions Body size The adult body size of C. vestitus (total length of the species inhabits to infer the conservation status of the head and body – mm) is within the range observed species because of the absence of information on other for small Coendou species (C. insidiosus – mm; C. factors that can influence the AOO, such as biotic interac- nycthemera – mm; C. pruinosus – mm; C. ru- tions (predation, competition) and landscape (connectivity fescens – mm; C. melanurus – mm; C. quichua and shelter) (Bernard et al., ). We also examined whether – mm; C. speratus – mm; C.