Los primates que habitan en los ecosistemas de montaña de la cordillera de Los Andes en Colombia están expuestos a fuertes amenazas como consecuencia del desarrollo de la infraestructura y la transformación del uso del suelo en lo que corresponde a la región más densamente poblada de Colombia. Para el género Aotus cuyos hábitos son principalmente nocturnos las amenazas sobre sus poblaciones no han sido bien documentadas hasta la fecha, aunque especies como el mono nocturno andino (Aotus lemurinus) ha sido catalogado como Vulnerable a nivel nacional y global. En este estudio, compilamos registros recientes de individuos de Aotus lemurinus muertos por electrocución accidental en cuatro departamentos de los Andes Centrales de Colombia. Estos registros contribuyen al conocimiento previo sobre esta problemática a nivel nacional y resaltan la necesidad de formular e implementar estrategias de mitigación del riesgo de electrocución para esta y otras especies.
Highway infrastructure is a source of multiple environmental problems, where wildlife roadkills is the most noticeable impact. Most of research in roadkills have focused in how different aspects as seasons, traffic density, location of roads, among others, have implications in the wildlife mortality on roads. However, little research have been developed on understanding how geometrical road design affects wildlife mortality. On a highway in the central Andes of Colombia, we tested whether the geometric design, it is horizontal alignment and vertical curves influence the mortality of vertebrate animals on the road. We determined the number of straight lines, circular, transition curves and vertical convex curves along the entire route of the highway (13.9 km), and between April 2018 and December 2019 we made 4 weekly tours in search of wildlife roadkills. With records, we related and compared groups of animal deaths and road shapes. We got 95 roadkills where reptile’s deaths were more than the 47% of total. We found no dependence in the distribution of deaths by Class of animals on the road shapes; the shape in which most deaths occurred was straight line (58 deaths). However, when the mortality rate per meter of route was obtained on the shape units, we found that the circular and transition curves presented two and three times (respectively) higher mortality rates than straight lines. Curved sections are presented as more dangerous geometric designs than straight lines for wildlife, regardless of their length on the road. Our research provides information necessary to take into account the relationship of geometric road design in the development of management and conservation plans of altered ecosystems with road infrastructure.
A major threat to biodiversity is illegal trade, with many unwanted wildlife pets released into exotic environments outside their native distribution. Therefore, many potential invasive species have established in new ecosystems. Ecological niche modeling (ENM) has been used to predict and compare the environmental conditions of natural and exotic population in many groups. We used ENM to compare the climatic niche between natural and exotic areas of Trachemys venusta callirostris, one of the most traded turtles in Colombia. We generated a niche model using the MaxEnt algorithm through the R package kuenm to test several parametrizations and four sets of fresh water environmental predictors. Models were calibrated in the native distribution and projected to non-native zones in Colombia to identify suitable areas for the species. Further, we use a niche similarity test to compare native and exotic environmental space. We found few suitable areas within the projected zone even when using extrapolation; there was a greater suitability in the Magdalena River basin than in the Cauca River basin. Low similarity was detected between the niche comparison of native and exotic areas, suggesting that exotic populations have reached different environmental conditions than the native zone through ilegal trade. Although there was low extrapolation in the exotic area, the models projected ideal conditions in localities with new records for this turtle. The generalist strategies for feeding, thermoregulation, and reproduction in changing conditions may help this T. v. callirostris establish in new ecosystems, and with no current knowledge on dynamics between this exotic species and local fauna, its effects on aquatic communities are unpredictable.
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