Small mammals from the Seasonally Dry Tropical Forests of the
Huallaga river basin and new records for San Martín department, Peru
Dennisse Ruelas
1, 2*
, Víctor Pacheco
1, 2
1 Museo de Historia Natural, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima, Peru • DR: druelasp@unmsm.edu.pe https://orcid.org/0000-
0002-3793-8639 • VP: vpachecot@unmsm.edu.pe https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1005-135X
2 Instituto de Ciencias Biológicas “Antonio Raimondi”, Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima, Peru.
* Corresponding author
Abstract
The Seasonally Dry Tropical Forests in Peru are well known for their bird and plant diversity and endemicity, but little
is known about the diversity of small mammals. We report the diversity of small volant and non-volant mammals from
the Seasonally Dry Tropical Forests of the Huallaga river basin in the San Martín Department, working on both sides
of the river, making a sampling efort of 3060 traps-night for non-volant and 104 mist nets-night for volant mammals.
We recorded 29 species, including fve marsupials, three rodents, and 21 bats. Among the bats, phyllostomids were the
most diverse group with 16 species. Short-tailed Spiny-rat, Proechimys brevicauda (Günther, 1877) and Seba’s Short-
tailed Bat, Carollia perspicillata (Linnaeus, 1758), featured the highest relative abundance. In addition, we report the
frst records for the San Martín Department of Peropteryx macrotis (Wagner, 1843), Saccopteryx bilineata (Temminck,
1838), Lonchorhina aurita Tomes, 1863, Vampyriscus bidens (Dobson, 1878), and Myotis simus Thomas, 1901. The
species richness and diversity indices indicate the study site has a high diversity value; however, fragmentation and
rapid changes in land-use are the main threats faced by the biodiversity of these dry forests.
Keywords
Chiroptera, Didelphimorphia, fragmentation, Neotropics, Rodentia
Academic editor: William Tavares | Received 19 December 2020 | Accepted 20 May 2021 | Published 7 June 2021
Citation: Ruelas D, Pacheco V (2021) Small mammals from the Seasonally Dry Tropical Forests of the Huallaga river basin and new records for
San Martín department, Peru. Check List 17 (3): 877–894. https://doi.org/10.15560/17.3.877
Introduction
Seasonally Dry Tropical Forests (SDTF) are character-
ized by pronounced seasonality, annual rainfall less than
1600 mm, receiving about 80% of the rains during the
wet season, resulting in several drought months during
the dry season, which can last fve or six months (Pen-
nington et al. 2000; Murphy and Lugo 1995; Maass
and Burgos 2011). These forests have a smaller stat-
ure and smaller basal areas than humid tropical forests
(Pennington et al. 2000; Murphy and Lugo 1995). They
range from Mexico to northern Argentina and southeast-
ern Brazil, representing 22% of the forested area of South
America (Murphy and Lugo 1986; Olson et al. 2001); but
having a fragmented distribution with areas of diferent
sizes (Espinosa et al. 2012).
SDTF are foristic and structurally more complex
than the rainforests (Murphy and Lugo 1986), although
Check List 17 (3): 877–894
https://doi.org/10.15560/17.3.877
© The authors. 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.
ANNOTATED LIST OF SPECIES