New, Possibly Arboreal Rice Rat Varieties Uncovered in Ecuador
“In total, the expeditions to the Kutukú region in southeastern Ecuador involved 1,200 trap nights, but only one specimen of the new species Mindomys kutuku was found,” claims Dr. Claudia Koch, curator of herpetology at the LIB, Gallery Koenig Bonn, describing the effort that applied into locating the uncommon species.
From the gathered specimen, the dehydrated skin, skeleton, and cells were preserved for the collections. Preservation will enable future research to detect ecological modifications, discover more about the environment of the species and plants, and safely document the characteristics of the new types, which was released in late February in the journal Evolutionary Systematics.
The rice rat genus Mindomys was previously considered monotypic and consisted of only the type group denominated Mindomys hammondi. This type is recognized from just a couple of samplings, all of which were gathered in the foothill woodlands of the Andes in northwestern Ecuador.
Utilizing computed tomography images fetched for the new types at LIB as well as for the holotype (specimen from which a species was defined) of M. hammondi at the Nature Gallery in London, the researchers Jorge Brito of the Instituto Nacional de la Biodiversidad (INABIO), Claudia Koch, Nicolás Tinoco from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador (PUCE) and Ulyses Pardiñas from the Instituto de Diversidad y Evolución del Sur (IDEAus-CONICET) could contrast the skulls of the two species in terrific detail in a 3D version and also distinguish between the two types.
The man of M. kutuku size is just under 35 centimeters from snout to a pointer of a tail, of which the bottom makes up around 20 centimeters. It has a dark reddish-brown dorsal pigmentation and pale yellow belly hair.
The arboreal species
Since the only specimen located was caught with the help of a ground trap set, it could not be observed in its environment. Hence, similar to its sibling species M. hammondi, which was described in 1913, basically nothing is understood about the natural history of the brand-new species.
The researchers think that both of them could be arboreal species. A significantly longer tail than the body’s length and likewise covered with lengthy hairs could be two attributes that indicate an arboreal way of life. Nevertheless, aboreality is the least studied way of life within the New World mice, and also, dependable research of the anatomical aspects of their lifestyle is still lacking.
Formerly, Mindomys documents were limited to the western Andean foothills of Ecuador. The Kutukú product currently reveals that the genus also takes place on the Amazonian side of the Andes and underscores the practical organic significance of the isolated range of mountains in eastern Ecuador.
Read the original article on sciencedaily.
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