Check List 11(6): e19386, doi: 10.15560/11.6.1784
A checklist of the amphibians and reptiles of Río Macho Biological Station, Provincia de Cartago, Costa Rica
expand article infoVíctor J. Acosta-Chaves‡, Gerardo Chaves‡, Juan G. Abarca‡, Adrián García-Rodríguez§, Federico Bolaños‡
‡ Universidad de Costa Rica, Costa Rica§ Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte/Universidad de Costa Rica, Costa Rica

Corresponding author: Víctor Acosta-Chaves ( victor2222@gmail.com )

© 2017 Víctor Acosta-Chaves, Gerardo Chaves, Juan Abarca, Adrián García-Rodríguez, Federico Bolaños.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation: García-Rodríguez A, Acosta-Chaves V, Chaves G, Abarca J, Bolaños F (2015) A checklist of the amphibians and reptiles of Río Macho Biological Station, Provincia de Cartago, Costa Rica. Check List 11(6): 1784. https://doi.org/10.15560/11.6.1784
Open Access
Abstract
We provide a checklist of the amphibians and reptiles of Río Macho Biological Station (RMBS), Costa Rica. During a period of a year (2012–2013) we conducted visual and acoustic surveys in a natural mature forest plot (>50 years old) (MF), secondary forest plot (~17 years old) (SF), in open areas and riparian forest at RMBS. We found a total of 11 species of amphibians and 15 species of reptiles belonging to 11 taxonomic families. We also compared the diversity of the MF against the SF. The MF contained 10 species (five amphibians and five reptiles) and the SF seven (three amphibians and four reptiles), with similar dominance between sites. Unfortunately, some forest and riparian species have vanished at this elevation after an enigmatic decline; according to historical literature pristine areas should contain higher species richness. Perhaps, the secondary forest will provide an available habitat for an important percentage of the remaining forest species.
Keywords
amphibians; Costa Rica; herpetofauna; lower montane forest; reptiles; Río Macho; Orosi Valley; secondary forest