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Ecuador has both high richness and high endemism of species which are increasingly threatened by anthropic pressures, including roads. However, research evaluating the effects of roads remains scarce, making it difficult to develop mitigation plans. Here we present the first national assessment of wildlife mortality that allow us to 1) identify species and areas where mortality occurs due to collision with vehicles and 2) reveal knowledge gaps. We bring together data from systematic surveys and citizen science efforts in Ecuador to present a dataset with >5000 wildlife roadkill records from 454 species. Systematic surveys were reported by ten studies conducted in five out of the 24 Ecuadorian provinces. Collectively they revealed 282 species with mortality rates ranging from 0.008 to 95.56 ind./km/year. The highest rates were for the yellow warbler Setophaga petechia in Galápagos (95.56 ind./km/year), the cane toad Rhinella marina in Napo (16.91 ind./km/year), and the small ground-finch Geospiza fuliginosa in Galápagos (14.11 ind./km/year). Citizen science and other no systematic monitoring provided 1705 roadkill records representing all the 24 provinces of Ecuador and 299 species. The common opossum Didelphis marsupialis, the Andean white-eared opossum Didelphis pernigra, and the yellow warbler Setophaga petechia were more commonly reported (250, 104, and 81 individuals respectively). Across all sources, we found 15 species listed as Threatened and six as Data Deficient by the IUCN. We suggest stronger research efforts on areas where mortality of endemic or threatened species could be critical for populations, such as in Galápagos. This first assessment of wildlife mortality on Ecuadorian roads represents contributions from several sectors including academia, members of the public, and government underlining the value of wider engagement and collaboration. We hope these findings and the compiled dataset will guide sustainable planning of infrastructure in Ecuador and ultimately, contribute to reduce wildlife mortality on roads.

Resumen.-Existen varios antecedentes de alambrados virtuales que utilizan diversas técnicas para mantener confinado al ganado bovino dentro de un perímetro configurado de forma remota. Estas técnicas comparten un patrón común que consiste en colocar un dispositivo electrónico en el animal capaz de aplicar estímulos cuando éste se acerca a los límites pre-establecidos. El uso de descargas eléctricas como método de estimulación es ampliamente utilizado. En este trabajo se propone una solución compatible con el bienestar animal, que evita las descargas eléctricas, basada solamente en estímulos sonoros y táctiles (mediante un motor vibrador). Para ello, se desarrolló un sistema que comprende un dispositivo electrónico que se coloca en el cuello del animal, y es capaz de determinar su posición, estimularlo y enviar información en forma inalámbrica; un servidor central que es capaz de recibir, procesar y almacenar esa información; y una interfaz gráfica, a través de la cual se puede visualizar la posición del animal y configurar distintos parámetros para evaluar diversas metodologías de confinamiento virtual. Las pruebas realizadas en animales sugieren que los estímulos propuestos no son inocuos, por lo que se estima, podrían lograr su cometido luego de un periodo de aprendizaje de los animales. La investigación sobre la eficacia de las metodologías de confinamiento de la plataforma desarrollada será realizada en una próxima etapa por un equipo interdisciplinario.Palabras clave: Alambrado virtual, confinamiento animal, seguimiento de animales, bienestar animal Summary.-Prior work in virtual fences has proposed different schemes to keep cattle confined within a remotely configured perimeter. These techniques share a common pattern that consists of placing an electronic device in the animal capable of applying stimuli when it approaches the preestablished limits. The use of electric shocks as a method of stimulation is widely used. This work

Historically, some of the most successful biodiversity data sharing initiatives have been developed particularly in North America, Europe, and Australia. In parallel, and driven by necessity, tools, practices and standards were shared across othes communities. In the last decade, great efforts have been made by countries in other regions to join the biodiversity data network and share their data worldwide. Although knowledge, tools, and documentation are broadly distributed, language is the main constraint for their use, as most of it is only available in English. English may be the first most spoken language worldwide (Eberhard et al. 2020), but it is not native to most of the population, including a sizable proportion of the United States (Ryan 2013). For instance, Spanish is listed as the second most spoken native language worldwide, after Mandarin Chinese (Eberhard et al. 2020). While recognizing that English is currently considered the “universal language” for scientifically-related activities, it has been pointed out that a large proportion of biodiversity scientific knowledge is not produced in English, and that language constitutes a barrier to sharing knowledge (Amano et al. 2016). Actions to overcome this have been called for, for example by the 2nd Global Biodiversity Informatics Conference (GBIC2) in its list of ambitions for supporting international collaboration (Hobern et al. 2019), but are still largely missing in the broad community. Language affects the understanding and use of biodiversity data standards and related documentation for all the community, both English and non-English speakers. Our findings in the Latin American region suggest that the availability of materials in other languages, namely Spanish and Portuguese, would greatly benefit the region and improve our involvement in biodiversity data sharing. Also, on the other hand, the English speaking community would benefit from better understanding knowledge in other non-English languages, allowing broader use of data from all regions. This work also constitutes a plea from the Latin American and the Spanish-speaking community at large to the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) to explore and incorporate other languages, hence fostering understanding, and therefore widening the use of TDWG standards in our region. We provide a list of people supporting the petition as Supplementary Material (Suppl. material 1). In the petition we also identify people (more than 60% of the signatories) who are willing to contribute to translating TDWG resources into Spanish. There is no single, best mechanism to move this initiative forward, but the approaches of some other initiatives (e.g., the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) translators network) are being explored, weighing resources needed both from the volunteers and the management perspectives. We will present the different options for the community to evaluate and decide upon a suitable action plan.