Check List 19(6): 883-900, doi: 10.15560/19.6.883
Non-volant mammals of the Serra da Fortaleza Wildlife Refuge, southern Goiás, central Brazil
expand article infoWellington Hannibal§, Hermes Willyan Parreira Claro|, Ana Claudia Bernardes-Dias|, Carolina Alves, Patricia Rezende Bernardes, Thaynara Lorrane Linhares da Silva
‡ Universidade Estadual de Goiás, Quirinópolis, Brazil§ Instituto Federal Goiano, Rio Verde, Brazil| Universidade Federal de Goiás, Goiânia, Brazil
Open Access
Abstract
Protected areas are essential for the maintenance of biodiversity, but we know little about local biodiversity in these areas. In this study, we describe the composition and structure of the non-volant mammal community in the Serra da Fortaleza Wildlife Refuge in southern Goiás state, central Brazil. We distributed 20 hexagons (~57 ha each), 10 in the protected area and 10 in its surroundings. We collected data on composition, richness, and abundance of non-volant mammals using live and pitfall traps, camera traps, and active searching. We recorded 39 species (five threatened) of non-volant mammals. The use of diverse sampling methods allowed for a com-prehensive depiction of mammal diversity and composition, lead to the discovery of new species records for the region, including Marmosa limae Thomas, 1920, Cerradomys scotti (Langguth & Bonvicino, 2002), Hylaeamys megacephalus (G. Fischer, 1814), and Tayassu pecari (Link, 1795). We emphasize the importance of protected areas for the conservation of the mammal fauna in the highly fragmented landscape of central Brazil.
Keywords
Biodiversity, camera trap, conservation, protected area, sampling methods