Conservation status of the order Rodentia of Brazil: taxonomic and biogeographical patterns

Gledson Vigiano Bianconi,Nicolette S. Roach,Lilianna K. Wolf,Alexandre Reis Percequillo,Thomas Edward Lacher,Shelby D. McCay

doi:10.46357/bcnaturais.v15i3.234

Abstract

The Global Mammal Assessment (GMA) evaluates the risk of extinction for all species of mammals, providing important data on their status to national and global conservation agencies and conventions. We assessed all of the species of Brazilian rodents as part of the GMA activities of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Species Survival Commission (IUCN SSC) Small Mammal Specialist Group. A total of 234 species were evaluated against the IUCN Red List Criteria and placed into one of eight categories. Although rodents do not have elevated extinction risk compared to mammals as a whole, several families of caviomorph rodents have high levels of either threat, data deficiency, or both. The family Echimyidae has a large number of species and one-third of those either are species of conservation concern or data deficient. The family Ctenomyidae also is of concern in this regard. There are also strong geographic patterns to threat and poor knowledge. The focal areas for conservation effort are the Atlantic Forest and the Cerrado, and for Data Deficient species Atlantic Forest, Cerrado, and Amazonia, in particular the eastern Amazon. The results highlight the need for targeted field research and the application of ecological and spatial data to the development of conservation actions.

Highlights

Rodents represent about 40% of all living mammal species, comprising close to 2,500 species divided into 34 families (Lacher et al, 2016)
The greatest increase was in the number of Least Concern (LC) species, as most of the 80 newly assessed species fell into this category
There was a total of 24 species we considered of conservation concern: 20 in one of the three threatened categories and four listed as Near Threatened

Summary

Introduction

Rodents represent about 40% of all living mammal species, comprising close to 2,500 species divided into 34 families (Lacher et al, 2016). In addition to the large number of taxa, rodents are diverse in their morphology, physiology and behavior Their life histories are directly influenced by their diet, and rodent diets are diverse, encompassing carnivory, insectivory, omnivory, granivory, generalist herbivory and specialist herbivory (Nowak, 1999; Samuels, 2009). Their diversity allows them to occupy different ecological niches and play vital roles in the functioning of ecosystems (Asquith et al, 1999; Keesing, 2000; Zeng et al, 2019)

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Results

Conclusion