Understanding distribution and survey gaps of Mammals from the Atlantic Forest and Cerrado Biomes

Querido, L.C.A. and Guimaraes, A.F. and Rosa, C. and Sayer, E.J. and Passamani, M. (2024) Understanding distribution and survey gaps of Mammals from the Atlantic Forest and Cerrado Biomes. Biota Neotropica, 24 (2): e20231569. ISSN 1676-0611

Abstract

The Atlantic Forest and Cerrado (Brazilian Savannah) contain a large number of endemic species and high species diversity, particularly for medium and large-bodied mammals. However, there is no large-scale assessment of these animals and their spatial distribution. Our study synthesises the literature on medium and large-bodied mammal surveys in the Cerrado and Atlantic Forest to provide insights into their distributions across large spatial scales and identify knowledge gaps to guide future research. We synthesised papers published in three databases, focusing on mammals weighing more than 1kg. Of the 84 papers we found, the majority (57.14%) were on mammals in the Atlantic Forest, while 42.85% were on mammals found in the Cerrado. We gathered records for 116 species, the most common of which were Cerdocyon thous (Linnaeus, 1766), Procyon cancrivorus (Cuvier, 1798) and Chrysocyon brachyurus (Illiger, 1815) (Cerrado); Dasypus novemcinctus (Linnaeus, 1758), Cerdocyon thous (Linnaeus, 1766) and Nasua nasua (Linnaeus, 1766; Atlantic Forest). Our study allowed us to access, for the first time in the Atlantic Forest and Cerrado, the information available about medium and large-bodied mammals. We also highlight important sampling gaps, especially concerning the northern parts of both biomes that we need to address, as well as the differences in density of sampling points that are caused by a smaller concentration of sampling efforts in the Atlantic Forest than what we found in Cerrado. As a consequence, larger extensions of Cerrado present knowledge gaps concerning mammal surveys that need to be investigated in future research.