NEOTROPICAL CARNIVORES: a data set on carnivore distribution in the Neotropics

Abstract

Mammalian carnivores are considered a key group in maintaining ecological health and can indicate potential ecological integrity in landscapes where they occur. Carnivores also hold high conservation value and their habitat requirements can guide management and conservation plans. The order Carnivora has 84 species from 8 families in the Neotropical region: Canidae; Felidae; Mephitidae; Mustelidae; Otariidae; Phocidae; Procyonidae; and Ursidae. Herein, we include published and unpublished data on native terrestrial Neotropical carnivores (Canidae; Felidae; Mephitidae; Mustelidae; Procyonidae; and Ursidae). NEOTROPICAL CARNIVORES is a publicly available data set that includes 99,605 data entries from 35,511 unique georeferenced coordinates. Detection/non‐detection and quantitative data were obtained from 1818 to 2018 by researchers, governmental agencies, non‐governmental organizations, and private consultants. Data were collected using several methods including camera trapping, museum collections, roadkill, line transect, and opportunistic records. Literature (peer‐reviewed and grey literature) from Portuguese, Spanish and English were incorporated in this compilation. Most of the data set consists of detection data entries (n = 79,343; 79.7%) but also includes non‐detection data (n = 20,262; 20.3%). Of those, 43.3% also include count data (n = 43,151). The information available in NEOTROPICAL CARNIVORES will contribute to macroecological, ecological, and conservation questions in multiple spatio‐temporal perspectives. As carnivores play key roles in trophic interactions, a better understanding of their distribution and habitat requirements are essential to establish conservation management plans and safeguard the future ecological health of Neotropical ecosystems. Our data paper, combined with other large‐scale data sets, has great potential to clarify species distribution and related ecological processes within the Neotropics. There are no copyright restrictions and no restriction for using data from this data paper, as long as the data paper is cited as the source of the information used. We also request that users inform us of how they intend to use the data.

The geography of diet variation in Neotropical Carnivora

“…Most species within families Mustelidae, Mephitidae, and Procyonidae had little dietary information available. For 27 out of 64 native species of terrestrial Neotropical carnivorans (Nagy‐Reis et al 2020), we could not find any quantitative information concerning their feeding ecology (e.g. Atelocynus microtis , Mephitis macroura , and Lyncodon patagonicus ).…”

“…1). There is a considerable geographical knowledge gap in areas as important as the Amazon rainforest, which bears a rich assemblage of carnivorans, with more than 20 species (Nagy‐Reis et al 2020).…”

“…Tropical ecosystems have a large diversity of mammalian carnivores living in sympatry (Bisbal 1986, Karanth & Sunquist 1995, Hayward & Slotow 2009), with more than 20 species co‐occurring in several regions in the Neotropics (Nagy‐Reis et al 2020). Despite the considerable number of local studies on the diet of Neotropical carnivores, with large amounts of data gathered in the field, we lack information on how comprehensive the available information is for different species and throughout these species’ geographical ranges.…”

New records and range extension of Euphractus sexcinctus (Linnaeus, 1758) (Cingulata, Chlamyphoridae) in Rondônia state, Brazil

“…The two new records from the central region of Rondônia state extend the distribution of E. sexcinctus westward by approximately 70 km. Published studies indicate that there is a large void of information on the distribution of mammals in the Amazon (Santos et al 2019;Nagy-Reis et al 2020), and this suggests that the species' disrupted distribution is more likely due to a lack of surveys than environmental preference, a possibility reinforced by a record in the central Amazon region (Santos et al 2019).…”

Intestinal Parasites of Neotropical Wild Jaguars, Pumas, Ocelots, and Jaguarundis in Colombia: Old Friends Brought Back from Oblivion and New Insights

“…Colombia is home to six species of NWF ( Table 1 ). Several of these species co-occur or are wholly sympatric; for example, puma, jaguarundi, and ocelot are sympatric to jaguar ranges in Colombia, but not necessarily the other way round [ 24 , 25 , 26 ].…”