No abstract

Roads affect wildlife in many ways, with roadkills probably the most conspicuous. In Mexico, there is increasing interest in this effect on wildlife. Together, richness and abundance can be used to predict trends for wild populations, and our study analyzes these variables for rodents killed by vehicles and trapped along a 14-km stretch of an A-type roadway in Veracruz, Mexico, from June 2010 to March 2011. Our study area had 2 habitat types: shrubland on lava flow and grassland. Over the course of the study, we monitored this stretch of highway by car for 34 days of effective sampling. When we spotted an animal, we stopped to record it. In the surrounding habitats, traps were set for 28 nights with 36 traps per habitat (total effort: 1,008 trap nights). The richness of trapped rodents was 9 species and for roadkills it was 14. The 2 sampling methods shared 7 species. The differential contribution was 2 species in trapping and 7 in roadkills. The complementarity index was 99.36. For both methods, the dominant species were mice of the genus Peromyscus ( Peromyscus difficilis for the shrubland and Peromyscus maniculatus for the grassland). Roadkills were a very representative source of information for the purposes of biological inventory and even for identifying the dominance pattern in species composition, thus offered a useful method for supplementing information obtained from traditional trapping. Highways threaten biodiversity mainly because they fragment habitats and further expose other habitats to impact by humans, but also because of their potential as a direct mortality factor. Careful interpretation of roadkill data can be a useful tool whose value for biologists has not yet been fully appreciated. Los caminos afectan a la fauna silvestre de muchas maneras, probablemente la más conspicua son los atropellamientos. En México, recientemente, algunos estudios comienzan a señalar con mayor interés el problema. Este estudio se enfoca en evaluar la riqueza y abundancia de roedores atropellados a lo largo de un segmento de 14 km de la carretera tipo A2 en el estado de Veracruz, abarcando desde junio de 2010 hasta marzo del 2011, Además, estos pueden predecir las tendencias de las poblaciones silvestres que habitan en la zona aledaña, compuesta por dos hábitats: malpaís y un llano. Durante el estudio, el camino se revisó desde el auto durante 34 días efectivos de muestreo carretero y un total de 28 noches de trampeo, que representa un esfuerzo de 1008 noches/trampa. Se obtuvo una riqueza de roedores de nueve especies por trampeo contra 14 encontradas atropelladas, con siete especies compartidas entre métodos. La contribución diferencia fue de dos especies por trampeo y siete por atropellamiento. Se obtuvo un índice de complementariedad de 99.36. Las especies dominantes en ambos métodos fueron los ratones del género Peromyscus ( P. difficilis para el malpaís y P. maniculatus para el llano). Los atropellamientos fueron una fuente eficiente de información biológica para inventarios e incluso permitieron identificar patrones de dominancia en la composición de especies. Por tanto, resaltamos su valor complementario a métodos tradicionales de trampeo. Las carreteras represantan una amenaza para la biodiversidad principalmente por que causan fragmentación de los hábitats exponiendo así más de estos al impacto humano, pero también por su potencial como un factor de mortalidad. Podemos explotar esto mediante la cuidadosa interpretación de información proporcionada por los atropellamientos, convirtiéndose en una herramienta útil para biólogos que hasta la fecha ha sido menospreciada.

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 Nuevo Xcan-Playa del Carmen highway in Quintana Roo, bisects the vegetation corridor connecting two Jaguar Conservation Units (JCUs): Yum Balaam (north) and Sian Ka´an (south). The project´s main goal was to describe differential use of available crossing structures (wildlife underpasses and culverts) by mammals present along this highway. We set 28 camera traps along the 54km stretch of the highway covering wildlife underpasses (10), and culverts such as box culverts (9) and pipes (9) from September 2016 until March 2017. A total of 24 jaguar crossings have been recorded exclusively using wildlife underpasses, including four males and two females. At least 18 other mammal species including five of the target priority species (protected by Mexican law) were documented, all of which were native except for two invasive species. In terms of species using the crossing structures, we identified 13 species using wildlife underpasses, nine using concrete box culverts and 10 using concrete pipes. Wildlife underpasses show higher diversity values (Shannon´s exponential index = 5.8 and Inverse Simpson´s index = 4.66) compared to culverts because they allow bigger species to cross. We recommend more highways along the jaguar´s distribution should develop mitigation measures to allow for wildlife connectivity. Wildlife underpasses, along with retrofitted culverts, could help secure not only the permanence of this species by facilitating the functional connectivity between populations but have positive impacts on other neotropical mammalian fauna as well.

Understanding how jaguars (