Rhipidomys (Rodentia, Cricetidae) from Paraguay: noteworthy new records and identity of the Paraguayan species

Abstract

Until now, there has been a single Paraguayan record of climbing rats of the genus Rhipidomys (Tschudi, 1845), and the specimen has not been identified at the species level. Remarkably, this record has been overlooked in recent mammal lists. Field work conducted in Paraguay during and since 2006 has produced the second and third records of Rhipidomys for this country. We conducted an assessment of external and skull morphologic variation, as well as Maximum Parsimony and Bayesian analyses based on DNA sequences, all of which indicate that all three known Paraguayan specimens of Rhipidomys belong to the species Rhipidomys macrurus (Gervais, 1855). In addition, we provide information distinguishing R. macrurus from some of its congeners, as well as new natural history data. There is now a total of 31 sigmodontine species with published Paraguayan records.

The mammalian faunas endemic to the Cerrado and the Caatinga

“…A number of species that were previously considered as endemic to the Caatinga, the Cerrado, or both, are not considered endemic to those geographic units in this study because: (1) our criterion to deem a species as endemic is stricter than that used by other authors (see Methods); or (2) recently published information demonstrate that these species are present in biomes other than the Caatinga and the Cerrado; or because (3) we do not consider them valid species. Due to either of the former two criteria, we excluded the following species from our list of endemics: Calomys tener , Cerradomys langguthi , Cerradomys vivoi , Cerradomys maracajuensis , Cerradomys subflavus , Ctenomys brasiliensis , Ctenomys nattereri , Clyomys laticeps , Dasyprocta azarae , Guerlinguetus poaiae , Kunsia tomentosus , Phyllomys blainvillii , Pseudoryzomys simplex , Rhipidomys macrurus , Thrichomys laurentius (see Cordeiro-Estrela et al 2006, de la Sancha et al 2011, Bezerra 2015, Bezerra and Bonvicino 2015b, Bidau 2015, Patton and Emmons 2015, Percequillo 2015, Pessôa et al 2015a, Salazar-Bravo 2015, de Vivo and Carmignotto 2015, Voss 2015a, Caccavo and Oliveira 2016). Besides the cases of Alouatta ululata and Coendou baturitensis , which we do not consider valid species (see discussion of cases above), we adhere to recent synopses of mammal genera provided by various authors, and do not recognize the following names as corresponding to valid species: Guerlinguetus poaiae , Urosciurus urucumus , Dasyprocta nigriclunis , and Rhipidomys cearanus (see Patton and Emmons 2015, Tribe 2015, de Vivo and Carmignotto 2015).…”

Metacommunity structure in a highly fragmented forest: has deforestation in the Atlantic Forest altered historic biogeographic patterns?

“…The entire non‐volant small mammal fauna of Paraguay consistently formed a distinct compartment along with other Interior AF sites. Paraguayan AF fragments have non‐volant small mammal communities comprised of species that phylogenetically are closely related to species from three different regions (de la Sancha, ): (1) southern coastal AF, including parts of Argentina, Uruguay and south‐eastern Brazil (de la Sancha et al ., , ; Valdez & D'Elía, ), (2) central and northern Brazil (de la Sancha et al ., ), and (3) the Chaco and Cerrado of Paraguay and Brazil (de la Sancha, ). The presence of Paraguayan compartments supports the contention that coastal and interior portions of the AF are distinct biogeographical units (Chebez & Massoia, ).…”

Systematics of the subgenus of mouse opossums Marmosa (Micoureus) (Didelphimorphia, Didelphidae) with noteworthy records from Paraguay

“…This is important given that the mammalian fauna of Paraguay is one of the least known in South America (Pine 1982;Myers et al 2002) even the long history of reports about these vertebrates (de Azara 1801(de Azara , 1802Rengger 1830;Bertoni 1914). This scenario is reflected in several recent additions to the known mammal fauna of Paraguay, which include a marsupial (de la Sancha et al 2007), a bat (Stevens et al 2010), several rodents including a new family (D'Elía et al 2008;Percequillo et al 2008;de la Sancha et al 2009ade la Sancha et al , 2011, an armadillo (Smith et al, in press), and even an exotic lagomorph (de la Sancha et al 2009b). Additional field work will aid in improving sample sizes as well as providing much needed taxonomic, ecological, and distributional data about these groups.…”