Sciurillus pusillus(Rodentia: Sciuridae)

NEOSQUIRREL: a data set of ecological knowledge on Neotropical squirrels

“…These small squirrel species are generally bark‐gleaners (Jessen et al. , ), consuming plant exudates and insects that are also difficult to identify. Other similar sized species are also affected by the lack of basic ecological data; for example, Sciurillus pusillus , for which we found no dietary information.…”

“…Another factor that may lead to underestimation of the importance of invertebrates as a food source for Neotropical squirrels is that the diet of the bark‐gleaner squirrel species remains unknown, and bark‐gleaners consume a significant amount of insects (Emmons , Jessen et al. , ). Squirrels also eat small vertebrates (Koprowski et al.…”

“…1 A possible explanation for the absence of ecological data for eight species of Microsciurus is the difficulty in locating and observing these small rodents (with body weight ~100 g) in the high and dense forest canopy. These small squirrel species are generally bark-gleaners (Jessen et al 2013a(Jessen et al , 2016, consuming plant exudates and insects that are also difficult to identify. Other similar sized species are also affected by the lack of basic ecological data; for example, Sciurillus pusillus, for which we found no dietary information.…”

“…It is very probable that the difficulty in observing when squirrels are consuming fruits containing larvae contributes to the underestimation of invertebrates as a food source for these rodents (Silvius 2002). Another factor that may lead to underestimation of the importance of invertebrates as a food source for Neotropical squirrels is that the diet of the bark-gleaner squirrel species remains unknown, and bark-gleaners consume a significant amount of insects (Emmons 1980, Jessen et al 2013a, 2016. Squirrels also eat small vertebrates ), but this is nearly unexplored for Neotropical species; we found only one record of an individual of Simosciurus nebouxii consuming the eggs of Phytotoma raimondii, an endangered bird in Peru (Nolazco & Roper 2014).…”

Geographic distribution of the Pygmy Squirrel Sciurillus pusillus (É. Geoffroy-St.-Hilaire, 1803) (Rodentia: Sciuridae) in the northwestern Amazonia, southern Colombia

“…To date, Sciurillus pusillus is known from few localities showing an apparent disjunct distribution between eastern and western lowland rainforest of South America. Eastern populations are found in northeastern Brazil (north and south of the Amazon River), French Guiana, Guyana, and Suriname (Wilson and Reeder 2005;Thorington et al 2012;Jessen et al 2013; de Vivo and Carmignotto 2015), whereas western populations are only recorded for the Amazon of Peru, south of Putumayo River (de Vivo and Carmignotto 2015). As mentioned in detail by de Vivo and Carmignotto (2015) the species has not been recorded in Ecuador or Venezuela; for Colombia although all of the faunal compilations of this country have included the species, none of them offered evidence supporting such claim (Cuervo Díaz et al 1986;Rodríguez-Mahecha et al 1995;Alberico et al 2000;Solari et al 2013).…”