Large and medium-sized mammals of Nova Baden State Park , Minas Gerais , Brazil

Nova Baden State Park (NBSP) is located in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest which is a biodiversity hotspot and priority for conservation. Our aim is to provide a list of large and medium-sized mammal species recorded in NBSP. We made a camera trap survey and opportunistic observations from December 2014 to September 2015, and searched the grey literature. We recorded 12 large and medium-sized mammals in our survey and 11 more species listed in grey literature. The 23 species registered for NBSP belong to eight orders (Carnivora, Primates, Rodents, Cingulata, Pilosa, Didephimorphia, Lagomorpha and Artiodactyla), including threatened species at local, national and global levels. With an important mammal biodiversity, we concluded that avoidance of poaching and the control of domestic dogs need to be priorities for biodiversity conservation of NBSP, with a political management that includes the local community in Park activities.


INTRODUCTION
The Brazilian Atlantic Forest is one of the most endangered tropical forests worldwide, with only 12% of remaining original cover area represented mostly by fragments with less than 50 ha (Ribeiro et al. 2009).Because its high fragmentation levels and high numbers of endemic species, Brazilian Atlantic Forest is a biodiversity hotspot and priority for conservation (Myers et al. 2000).With remarkable mammal' diversity, the Brazilian Atlantic Forest is the Biome with the most number of endangered mammal species (Costa et al. 2005).
The Serra da Mantiqueira is a mountain range (altitude between 1133 and 2798 m) in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest extending for 500 km along southeastern Brazil, between the states of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo.The Serra da Mantiqueira is considered to be an irreplaceable area for biodiversity conservation (Le Saout et al. 2013) and is protected by a patchwork of public and private protected areas.
Besides their importance for biodiversity conservation, many protected areas in Serra da Mantiqueira present large gaps in scientific information about their biodiversity, especially large and medium-sized mammals.Thus our aim is to provide a list of medium and large-sized mammals in Nova Baden State Park (NBSP), a protected area in the Serra da Mantiqueira, Minas Gerais state.

Study site
NBSP is located in southeastern region of Brazil at municipally of Lambari, Minas Gerais (21°56ʹ00ʺ S, 045°18ʹ30ʺ W, datum WGS84).NBSP covers about 214 ha and the vegetation domain is the Semideciduous Montane Forest with altitude range between 860 and 1286 m.The climate type is Cwb (Köppen 1936) with 1500 mm of rainfall/year an average annual temperature of 18 °C.

Data collection and analysis
To assess richness of large and medium-sized mammals we conducted a camera trapping effort of 810 camera-nights from December 2014 to September 2015 in NBSP.The survey was conducted as voluntary work to complement the Management Plan of NBSP.We used 3 motion-activation digital cameras (Bushnell HD, Bushnell Outdoor Products, California, USA) set to take 3 photos every 30 seconds.We installed the cameras in three independent points, 800 m distant from each other (Fig. 1) and on trails used by species without the use of bait.The camera traps were kept in continuous operation and were checked every 2 months to change battery and memory cards.During fieldwork we also made opportunistic observations that were recorded by photos.
We identified the species using the camera trap records, opportunistic photos and based on specialized literature (Eisenberg & Redford 1999, Canevari & Vaccaro 2007).Felines were identified through body, pelage, nose and tail characteristics (for small felines) and by size and shape of footprint (for Puma concolor Linnaeus, 1771) (Oliveira & Cassaro 2006, Pereira et al. 2012).Species names followed Paglia et al. (2012) and we also recognize the recent distinction between Leopardus guttulus (Hensel, 1872) and Leopardus tigrinus (Schreber, 1775) in the southern and southeastern Brazil (Trigo et al. 2013).Using only the camera-trap records, we created the rarefaction curve of mammal species with 1,000 randomizations and the first-order jackknife (Jackknife 1) estimator in EstimateS 9.1.0(Colwell 2013).
Because we could not expand our sampling effort and we did not reached the minimal effort recommend by Si et al. (2014) to detect the resident species, we complemented our methodology with a search of grey literature that reported large and medium-sized mammals in Nova Baden State Park.All the species with more than 1 kg are considered as large and medium-sized mammals and included in the list.

RESULTS
We recorded 10 large and medium-sized mammal species in our camera-trap survey (Table 1).Puma yagouaroundi (É.Geoffroy, 1803) was identified by its monochromatic and long body and tail.Leopardus pardalis was identified through its large body size, elongated rosettes pattern of body side and relatively smaller tail when compared with other Leopardus species.Leopardus guttulus was identified by its relatively smaller tail with narrow rings, pink nose and pattern of forms circles and eyespots on the sides of the body that differentiate this species from L. wiedii (Schinz, 1821).Cabassous sp. was identified by the absence of plates on the tail that differentiate this genus from other armadillos.
We recorded 2 more species in opportunistic observations: a group with 4 individuals of Alouatta guariba (Humboldt, 1812) in December 2014 during camera traps installations; and a footprint from P. concolor that was photographed by a park worker in July 2015.The footprint was identified by the absence of nails, long and oval fingers, and length of 9 cm, which distinguishes it from small cats that usually do not exceed 5 cm in length (Fig. 2; Table 1).
The 23 large and medium-sized mammals listed for NBSP belong to 8 orders: 9 species of Carnivora, 5 Primates, 3 Rodentia, 2 Cingulata, and 1 each of Pilosa, Didephimorphia, Lagomorpha and Artiodactyla (Table 1).Our camera-trap survey also recorded at least 4 different individuals of domestic dog Canis lupus familiaris in NBST.

DISCUSSION
The diversity of large and medium sized-mammals found in NBSP represents 10% of the mammals recorded for these orders in all the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (Paglia et al. 2012).Five species recorded in our camera-trap survey, L. pardalis, L. guttulus, Tamandua tetradactyla (Linnaeus, 1758) and Cabassous sp., were not recorded in previous studies in the area (Calaboni & Silva 2008, Stumpp 2008, Vilela & Guedes 2009).Cerdocyon thous, C. brachyurus, C. nigrifrons, H. hydrochaeris and C. prehensilis were recorded only by indirect signs (e.g., footprints and feces) or by interviews in the grey literature (Calaboni & Silva 2008, Stumpp 2008, Vilela & Guedes 2009).Thus, we recommend future studies to verify these species in NBSP.Of the species known from NBST, 5 are threatened locally in Minas Gerais (COPAM 2010) and 5 species are on the Brazilian list of threatened species (MMA 2014).Two species are listed as Vulnerable and 3 are Near Threatened according to the IUCN (2017).Of these species we highlight C. aurita, C. brachyurus and L. guttulus that are common to the 3 lists of threatened species.
Protected areas are crucial for conservation of carnivore diversity in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (Costa et al. 2005).Serra do Papagaio State Park (SPSP) and Itatiaia National Park (INP), 2 other protected areas in the Serra da Mantiqueira that are less than 100 km away from NBSP, have occurrences of all carnivores recorded from NBSP but also Lontra longicaudis (Olfers, 1818) and L. wiedii (Geise et al. 2004;IEF 2009).We recorded P. concolor in NBSP with a single indirect observation as in the previous studies (Stumpp et al. 2008, Vilela & Guedes 2009).The area of NBSP is dozens of times smaller than the home range of P. concolor (Gittleman & Harvey 1982, Scognamillo et al. 2003).Thus, we believe that P. concolor use NBSP but also the surroundings of the protected area.At the same time species that are important prey (e.g., M.   (Geise et al. 2004, IEF 2009) but are not recorded in NBSP.There are no reasons for lack of occurrence of mammals such as P. tajacu and T. pecari in NBSP because it is within the ranges and ecological demands of these species (Wilson & Reeder 2005).Even recently these species are not cited as targets of poaching in NBSP (Vilela & Guedes 2009).We believe that regional fragmentation and historical poaching is the reason for species local extinction (Reyna-Hurtado et al. 2009, Jácomo et al. 2013), but also the presence of domestic dogs is worrying because they are responsible for loss of biodiversity via competition, predation and disease (Paschoal et al. 2012, Hughes & Macdonald 2013).Domestic dogs need to be eradicated from protected areas.
Compared to other protected areas in the Serra da Mantiqueira, the diversity of large and medium-sized mammals of NBSP is remarkable because it is more than 70 times smaller in area than either SPSP or INP.The mammal diversity is of different trophic and threatened levels, including herbivore (e.g., M. americana, S. brasiliensis), insectivore (e.g., T. tetradactyla), carnivore (e.g., L. guttulus, P. concolor), frugivore/ folivore (e.g., A. guariba, C. nigrifrons) and omnivore (e.g.. Procyon cancrivorus (G.Cuvier, 1798), Didelphis aurita (Wied-Neuwied, 1826)) species (Paglia et al. 2012).NBSP is the only protected area in a 55 km radius that connects with the other protected areas in the Serra da Mantiqueira.For an effec-tive conservation of NBSP biodiversity, the control of poaching and domestic animals, especially dogs, need to be priorities for park administrators with a management policy that includes the local community in park activities.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Map showing the location and perimeter of the study area (black line) and the camera-trap points (black circle) in Nova Baden State Park.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3.The rarefaction curve of large and medium-sized mammals of Nova Baden State Park for camera-trap survey.Sobs is the total number of species observed and rarefaction curve is the number of species estimated by Jackknife 1.