Medium and large mammals of the Upper Rio Madeira

• Grant number: 12/20463-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date until: January 01, 2013
• End date until: December 31, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Zoology - Taxonomy of Recent Groups
• Principal Investigator: Alexandre Reis Percequillo
• Grantee: Luana de Paula e Silva
• Host Institution: Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Queiroz (ESALQ). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Piracicaba , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The mammals, ranging from a few grams to hundreds of kilograms, play a fundamental role in ecosystem dynamics and include species that differ considerably in diet, locomotion, habitat, social behavior, and circadian activity. Brazil has the world's second-largest diversity of mammals, 701 species belonging to 243 genera, 50 families, and 12 orders. This diversity is distributed in the biomes Amazon, Caatinga, Cerrado, Pantanal, Atlantic forest, and Pampa, and the Amazon is considered the biome with the greatest diversity of mammal species. In the Brazilian Amazon so far have been cataloged 399 species of mammals, but this number should be regarded as only approximate because as taxonomic revisions are made and new areas are sampled, the number of species tends to increase. There have been cataloged in the Amazon, about 154 species of mammals considered as medium and large, but there are several classifications in the literature as to the representatives of this size. Several studies overtime on diversity and geographic distributions of terrestrial vertebrates in the Amazon have been conducted, but for this region, there is a need to expand the studies on biodiversity, due to the precocity of biological inventories and urgency to prioritize the use and conservation of biological diversity of the region. The fauna of medium and large mammals of the Madeira River was sampled in a superficial way, and thus, this Undergraduate Research project will contribute with knowledge of the fauna of medium and large mammalian from the upper Madeira River, through data sampling available in the database of the Mammals Laboratory of the University of São Paulo, campus "Luiz de Queiroz", which have not yet been adequately addressed.(AU)