Activity pattern of medium and large sized mammals and density estimates of Cuniculus paca (Rodentia: Cuniculidae) in the Brazilian Pampa

Abstract

Between July 2014 and April 2015, we conducted weekly inventories of the circadian activity patterns of mammals in Passo Novo locality, municipality of Alegrete, southern Brazil. The vegetation is comprised by a grassy-woody steppe (grassland). We used two camera traps alternately located on one of four 1 km transects, each separated by 1 km. We classified the activity pattern of species by the percentage of photographic records taken in each daily period. We identify Cuniculus paca individuals by differences in the patterns of flank spots. We then estimate the density 1) considering the area of riparian forest present in the sampling area, and 2) through capture/recapture analysis. Cuniculus paca, Conepatus chinga and Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris were nocturnal, Cerdocyon thous had a crepuscular/nocturnal pattern, while Mazama gouazoubira was cathemeral. The patterns of circadian activity observed for medium and large mammals in this Pampa region (southern grasslands) may reflect not only evolutionary, biological and ecological affects, but also human impacts not assessed in this study. We identified ten individuals of C. paca through skin spot patterns during the study period, which were recorded in different transects and months. The minimum population density of C. paca was 3.5 individuals per km2 (resident animals only) and the total density estimates varied from 7.1 to 11.8 individuals per km2, when considering all individuals recorded or the result of the capture/recapture analysis, respectively.

Temporal activity of rural free-ranging dogs: implications for the predator and prey species in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest

“…In common with our results for the REBIO Serra do Japi, D. aurita, C. paca, S. brasiliensis, and L. pardalis have previously been described as having nocturnal habits in South American tropical forests (Alves and Adriolo 2005;Di Bitetti et al 2006;Michalski and Norris 2011;Blake et al 2012;Ferreira and Vieira 2014;Massara et al 2016;Pratas-Santiago et al 2016;Silva et al 2018). We found no differences between activity patterns of ocelot and their prey, and they showed high overlap in temporal activity.…”

“…Moreover, despite the tendency for prey to reduce their activity in periods when predators are more active (Eccard et al 2008;Gliwicz and Dabrowski 2008), in South America, there seems to be a strong overlap between prey and predator activity patterns (e.g. Blake et al 2012;Silva-Rodríguez and Sieving 2012;Foster et al 2013;Pratas-Santiago et al 2016), suggesting that predators are more efficient in adjusting their activity to reduce energy costs (Foster et al 2013), than are prey in avoiding the high activity periods of predators.…”

Diversidad y actividad horaria de mamíferos medianos y grandes registrados con cámaras trampa en el Parque Nacional Tingo María, Huánuco, Perú

“…Keuling et al 2008, Little et al 2016, Marchand et al 2014. Los patrones de actividad horaria aquí descritos de D. marsupialis, D. novemcinctus, D. fuliginosa, C. paca, H. hydrochaeris, N. nasua y P. tajacu concuerdan con observaciones en otras localidades de su distribución (Albanesi et al 2016, Ávila-Nájera et al 2016, Huck et al 2017, Leuchtenberger et al 2018, Mosquera-Guerra et al 2018, Parodi 2015. Aunque existe actividad cinegética (Gonzales & Llerena 2014) y turística (INRENA 2002) dentro del PNTM y su zona de amortiguamiento, nuestros resultados sugieren que el comportamiento de dichas especies no está siendo afectado de forma notable por la actividad humana en el parque, en lo que se refiere a la actividad horaria.…”

Mamíferos Registrados Con Cámaras Trampa en La Zona De Uso Turístico De La Reserva Nacional Allpahuayo-Mishana, Loreto, Perú

“…Siguiendo esta idea, se graficó el horario de actividad de las especies con más de 100 registros utilizando el paquete Overlap (Meredith y Ridout, 2014) con el software R y, de manera referencial, se produjo gráficos para las especies con más de 10 registros independientes utilizando el número de registros obtenidos por cada periodo de una hora (Rowcliffe et al, 2014) con el programa Excel. Las especies con 10 registros o menos no fueron tomadas en cuenta en este proceso por considerarse que tal número es insuficiente (Leuchtenberger et al, 2018).…”

“…Nuestros resultados concuerdan con los patrones de actividad anteriormente reportados para la zarigüeya orejinegra, la rata marsupial, los armadillos Dasypus, las ardillas rojas, las ratas espinosas, el añuje, el majás y el manco (Albanesi et al, 2016;Fabre et al, 2016;Wilson et al, 2016;Huck et al, 2017;Leuchtenberger et al, 2018;Mosquera-Guerra et al, 2018;Cossios & Ricra, 2019), aunque deben ser tomados con cuidado debido al bajo número de registros obtenido.…”