New records of Leopardus guigna in its northern-most distribution in Chile: implications for conservation
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(2020) 93:7
Revista Chilena de Historia Natural
SHORT REPORT
Open Access
New records of Leopardus guigna in its northern-most distribution in Chile: implications for conservation Constanza Napolitano1,2*† , Cristian Larraguibel-González3†, Amancay A. Cepeda-Mercado4, Pablo Vial5 and Jim Sanderson6,7 Abstract We report new records of the wild felid Leopardus guigna in its northern-most distribution, in the southern Coquimbo and northern Valparaíso regions, in northern-central Chile. To our knowledge, these are the northernmost confirmed guigna records to date. We discuss implications for the conservation of these fragile populations in the face of different anthropic threats. Keywords: Northern-most distribution, Coquimbo region, Guigna, Wildlife, Conservation, Anthropic threats The guigna (Leopardus guigna) [24], the smallest felid in the Americas, also has a restricted distribution, being found primarily in central and southern Chile (30°-48°S), including the large island of Chiloe (off the coast of southern Chile), and marginally in adjoining areas of southwestern Argentina (39°- 46°S west of 70°W) from sea level to 2500 m [17, 26, 27, 33]. Two subspecies are recognized based on morphological and genetic data: L. guigna tigrillo (from 30°-38°S in Chile) has a lighter coat color and larger body size, inhabiting Mediterranean matorral and sclerophyll woodlands and forests in northern-central and central Chile, and L. guigna guigna (from 38°-48° in Chile and 39°-46°S in Argentina west of 70°W) is darker and smaller, inhabiting more-dense Valdivian temperate rainforest and north Patagonian forest in southern and extreme southern Chile and the Andean Patagonian forest in southwestern Argentina [26, 27].
* Correspondence: [email protected] † Constanza Napolitano and Cristian Larraguibel-González contributed equally to this work. 1 Departamento de Ciencias Biológicas y Biodiversidad, Universidad de Los Lagos, Osorno, Chile 2 Instituto de Ecología y Biodiversidad (IEB), Santiago, Chile Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
Guignas are closely associated with native Mediterranean forests and temperate rainforests, vegetation cover being a key ecological requirement for the species [34]. Guignas can adapt to inhabiting fragmented humandominated landscapes, using small forest fragments and vegetation corridors within the agricultural matrix to move across the landscape [12]. Movements take place exclusively in vegetated depressions or corridors, some as small as 3 m wide and the species never uses or crosses grazed pasture with vegetation < 0.4 m high [33]. Guignas have also been reported in pine plantations with dense understory [1]. Because of their restricted distribution, guignas are particularly vulnerable to the loss of native forest [29], which is currently fragmenting its area of occupancy [1, 28, 33]. Given that a high proportion of geographic areas throughout guigna range are suffering from habitat loss and fragmentation [8], the species is classified as Vulnerab
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