A New Species of Spiny Pocket Mouse (Heteromyidae: Heteromys) Endemic to Western Ecuador

Abstract

Whereas previous treatments have considered Heteromys australis the only spiny pocket mouse present in Ecuador, morphological and morphometric analyses of specimens from Ecuador and southwestern Colombia reveal the presence of two species of the genus. Heteromys australis is distributed in evergreen forests from eastern Panama and western Venezuela through Colombia to extreme northwestern Ecuador, where it inhabits wet, unseasonal areas of the Choc6é and adjacent western slopes of the Andes. We here describe a new species, Heteromys teleus, found only in evergreen forests of central-western Ecuador, in areas less mesic and more seasonal than those characteristic of H. australis. Both species possess dark gray dorsal pelage, but H. teleus differs by larger (nonoverlapping) measurements of the hind foot and distinctive cranial proportions. Most notably, the rostrum of the new species is strikingly wide and massive, and the interparietal is narrow and rounded (in contrast to the wide, diamond-shaped interparietal of H. australis). The ranges of the two species together conform to the previously recognized Chocoan evergreen-forest fauna of western Colombia and northwestern Ecuador. However, the restriction of H. teleus to evergreen but seasonal forests of the southern Chocé6 (transitional between the relatively unseasonal evergreen forests of the central Chocé6 to the north and highly seasonal xeric regions to the south) is unique within currently

Taxonomic revision of the olingos (Bassaricyon), with description of a new species, the Olinguito

“…The rapid and ongoing discovery of endemic mammals and birds in northern Andean cloud forests (e.g., Robbins and Stiles 1999, Anderson and Jarrín-V 2002, Cuervo et al 2001, 2005, Lara et al 2012, Ojala-Barbour et al in press) reaffirms the evolutionary importance of these unique habitats and betrays how incompletely inventoried this biota remains. Though a center of diversity and endemism for many groups (e.g., Young et al 2002, Brehm et al 2005, Mittermeier et al 2005, Hughes and Eastwood 2006, Patterson et al 2012), northern Andean cloud forests are among the most threatened ecosystems in the Neotropics (Young 1994, Myers et al 2000, Mittermeier et al 2005, Schipper et al 2008).…”

A framework for using niche models to estimate impacts of climate change on species distributions

“…For example, in northwestern South America, the spiny pocket mice Heteromys australis and Heteromys anomalus exhibit distributions that illustrate patterns consistent with both dispersal‐related and biotic limitations. The species inhabit overlapping abiotic conditions (in environmental space) but show spatially complementary (parapatric) distributions in geographic space . For each species, correlative niche models projected onto geographic space indicate disjunct areas of abiotically suitable conditions that the species does not inhabit, apparently because of barriers to dispersal in this topographically complex system .…”

Morphometrics and Taxonomy of Bats of the Genus Pteronotus (Subgenus Phyllodia) in Venezuela

“…When a PCA is performed on linear body measurements, the 1st component (PC1) represents a size factor, and each of the remaining components represents a unique shape factor (e.g., Anderson 2003;Chase et al 2002;De Marinis 1995;Jolicoeur and Mosimann 1960;Lorenzo et al 2004;Molina and Molinari 1999;Rohlf and Bookstein 1987;Schonewald et al 1985). However, there are exceptions (e.g., Anderson and Jarrín-V. 2002;Pardiñas et al 2005). Hence, only after inspecting PCA variable loadings, we interpreted the 1st component of each PCA as a size factor, and subsequent components as shape factors (see ''Results'' for the criteria that we used).…”