The mammalian faunas endemic to the Cerrado and the Caatinga

Abstract

Citation: Gutiérrez EE, Marinho-Filho J (2017) The mammalian faunas endemic to the Cerrado and the Caatinga. ZooKeys 644: 105-157. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.644.10827 AbstractWe undertook a comprehensive, critical review of literature concerning the distribution, conservation status, and taxonomy of species of mammals endemic to the Cerrado and the Caatinga, the two largest biomes of the South American Dry-Diagonal. We present species accounts and lists of species, which we built with criteria that, in our opinion, yielded results with increased scientific rigor relative to previously published lists -e.g., excluding nominal taxa whose statuses as species have been claimed only on the basis of unpublished data, incomplete taxonomic work, or weak evidence. For various taxa, we provided arguments regarding species distributions, conservation and taxonomic statuses previously lacking in the literature. Two major findings are worth highlighting. First, we unveil the existence of a group of species endemic to both the Cerrado and the Caatinga (i.e., present in both biomes and absent in all other biomes). From the biogeographic point of view, this group, herein referred to as Caatinga-Cerrado endemics, deserves attention as a unit -just as in case of the Caatinga-only and the Cerrado-only endemics. We present preliminary hypotheses on the origin of these three endemic faunas (Cerrado-only, Caatingaonly, and Caatinga-Cerrado endemics). Secondly, we discovered that a substantial portion of the endemic mammalian faunas of the Caatinga and the Cerrado faces risks of extinction that are unrecognized in the highly influential Red List of Threatened Species published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). "Data deficient" is a category that misrepresents the real risks of extinction of these species considering that (a) some of these species are known only from a handful of specimens collected in a single or a few localities long ago; (b) the Cerrado and the Caatinga have been sufficiently sampled to guarantee collection of additional specimens of these species if they were abundant; (c) natural habitats RESEARCH ARTICLE Launched to accelerate biodiversity research A peer-reviewed open-access journalEliécer E. Gutiérrez & Jader Marinho-Filho / ZooKeys 644: 105-157 (2017) 106 of the Cerrado and the Caatinga have been substantially altered or lost in recent decades. Failures either in the design of the IUCN criteria or in their application to assign categories of extinction risks represent an additional important threat to these endemic faunas because their real risks of extinctions become hidden. It is imperative to correct this situation, particularly considering that these species are associated to habitats that are experiencing fast transformation into areas for agriculture, at an unbearable cost for biodiversity.

Supplemental Material for 'A new collared lizard (Tropidurus, Tropiduridae) endemic to the western Bolivian Andes and its implications for seasonally dry tropical forests. (American Museum novitates, no. 3896)'

“…Second, we did not find support for seasonally dry tropical forests as closely related biogeographic units. Indeed, the distribution of endemism observed herein is consistent with studies that recognize the unique biotic identity of open dry areas (Silva, 1995;Nogueira et al, 2011;Gutiérrez and Marinho-Filho, 2017) versus seasonally dry tropical forests in South America (Prado and Gibbs, 1993;Silva et al, 2004;López et al, 2006;Queiroz, 2006;Werneck and Colli, 2006). Interestingly, endemics and codistributed taxa with disjunct distributions in seasonally dry tropical forests were for a long time assumed as evidence of the fragmentation of a formerly more extensive and contiguous biome that covered areas currently dominated by the Cerrado and the Amazon.…”

Medium-sized to large mammals of Serra do Tombador, Cerrado of Brazil

“…To date, the mammal richness of the Cerrado is reported to be between 227 (Carmignotto et al 2012) and 251 species (Paglia et al 2012). Twenty-two species are endemic (Gutiérrez & Marinho-Filho 2017).…”

Sigmodontine rodents (Rodentia, Cricetidae) from Quaternary cave deposits of Serra da Capivara, Northeastern Brazil

“…Based on the modern sigmodontine geographical distribution (Patton et al, 2015) and the mastofauna recorded from Caatinga and Cerrado biomes (e.g. Carmignotto et al, 2012;Gutiérrez & Marinho-Filho, 2017), the majority of the identified taxa could be expected for the Serra da Capivara region, with the exception of Bibimys. According to Pardiñas et al (2015), three species are known for this genus: B. chacoensis, which occurs from eastern Argentina (Hadler et al, 2016); and from Holocene deposits from Argentina (see Pardiñas et al, 2015 and references therein;B.…”