Diego F. Cisneros-Heredia

Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) · Department of Biology

The threats facing Ecuador's Yasuní National Park are emblematic of those confronting the greater western Amazon, one of the world's last high-biodiversity wilderness areas. Notably, the country's second largest untapped oil reserves--called "ITT"--lie beneath an intact, remote section of the park. The conservation significance of Yasuní may weigh...

Anfibios y reptiles de los bosques tropicales del Chocó de la provincia de Esmeraldas, Ecuador

Effective and targeted conservation action requires detailed information about species, their distribution, systematics and ecology as well as the distribution of threat processes which affect them. Knowledge of reptilian diversity remains surprisingly disparate, and innovative means of gaining rapid insight into the status of reptiles are needed i...

Fast and accurate taxonomic identification of invasive trans-located ladybird beetle species is essential to prevent significant impacts on biological communities, ecosystem functions, and agricultural business economics. Therefore, in this work we propose a two-step automatic detector for ladybird beetles in random environment images as the first...

Ecuador is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, but faces severe pressures and threats to its natural ecosystems. Numerous species have declined and require to be objectively evaluated and quantified, as a step towards the development of conservation strategies. Herein, we present an updated National Red List Assessment for amphibian...

The hemipteran Stenomacra tungurahuana Brailovsky & Mayorga was described in 1997 and remains known from just two localities in Ecuador. No ecological information nor description of its colouration in life have been reported for the species. In this contribution, I present a new record of S. tungurahuana from San Isidro Lodge, province of Napo, tha...

Comprehensive assessments of species’ extinction risks have documented the extinction crisis and underpinned strategies for reducing those risks. Global assessments reveal that, among tetrapods, 40.7% of amphibians, 25.4% of mammals and 13.6% of birds are threatened with extinction. Because global assessments have been lacking, reptiles have been o...

Comprehensive assessments of species’ extinction risks have documented the extinction crisis and underpinned strategies for reducing those risks. Global assessments reveal that, among tetrapods, 40.7% of amphibians, 25.4% of mammals and 13.6% of birds are threatened with extinction. Because global assessments have been lacking, reptiles have been o...

Species with large distributions provide unique opportunities to test how geography has influenced biotic diversification. In this work, we aimed to explore the effect of geographic barriers on the distribution of the phenotypic and genetic variation of a spider species that is widespread in continental and insular America. We obtained an alignment...

La ciencia ciudadana se ha convertido en un elemento clave para la educación ambiental, y para generar vínculos entre las personas y la naturaleza. En este capítulo presentamos cómo ha crecido el proyecto de vinculación con la sociedad "Celebrando la Naturaleza Urbana" y también c´ómo ha sido aplicado en casos de estudio de dos colegios de Quito, E...

Urbanization transforms environments in ways that alter biological evolution. We examined whether urban environmental change drives parallel evolution by sampling 110,019 white clover plants from 6169 populations in 160 cities globally. Plants were assayed for a Mendelian antiherbivore defense that also affects tolerance to abiotic stressors. Urban...

The genus Zoniferella includes six taxa of land snails from Colombia and Ecuador for which little has been published beyond their original descriptions. In this paper, we present new records of Zoniferella vespera, a species previously known only from its type locality, expanding its range across northwestern Ecuador. We provide the first descripti...

The COVID-19 pandemic hit Ecuador severely. The country caught the attention of international media due to its high death toll and overwhelmed healthcare system. The clinical diagnostics system was rapidly overloaded, and the import of PCR tests was delayed. The case of Ecuador illustrates how middle-income countries rely heavily on the importation...

This work compares five different distance metrics (i.e., Euclidean, Chebyshev, Manhattan, Mahalanobis, and Canberra) implemented in the weighted Hausdorff distance (WHD) as part of the loss function during the training and validation of a fully convolutional neural network (FCNN) model for detecting ladybird beetle specimens. The FCNN-based detect...

We describe a new species of terrestrial-breeding frog of the genus Noblella from the northwestern slopes of the Andes of Ecuador, in the province of Pichincha, Ecuador, and report a new locality for the recently described N. worleyae. We include a detailed description of the osteology of both species and discuss their phylogenetic relationships. T...

We report the rediscovery of Laura’s Glassfrog, Nymphargus laurae Cisneros-Heredia & McDiarmid, 2007, based on two specimens collected at the Colonso-Chalupas Biological Reserve, province of Napo, Ecuador. The species was described and known from a single male specimen collected in 1955 at Loreto, north-eastern Andean foothills of Ecuador. Limited...

We describe a new species of Pristimantis from southern Ecuador, province of Zamora Chinchipe. The new species is closely related to an undescribed species of Pristimantis from Reserva Tapichalaca, Ecuador and with species of a clade historically assigned to the P. unistrigatus species group, such as P. parvillus, P. luteolateralis, P. walkeri, amo...

The analysis of the intestinal microbiome in amphibians provides insights of the anthropogenic environmental impact. Pristimantis unistrigatus is an Andean amphibian species whose distribution has been recorded in Ecuador and Colombia, ranging from endemic elfin forests to urban gardens. In this study, we focus on the analysis of the P. unistrigatu...

Seasonally dry forests (SDFs) are one of the most challenging ecosystems for amphibians, fueling the diversity of this group of vertebrates. An updated inventory of native amphibians present in the Equatorial SDF is provided, which extends along the Pacific coast of Ecuador and northwestern Peru. The study is based on an extensive field sampling (t...

The genus Taczanowskia Keyserling, 1879 is one of the rarest groups of spiders in the orb-weaving family Araneidae, with only five species described and 17 specimens cited in publications. Our study provides new insights into the evolutionary relationships and diversity of Taczanowskia. Using morphological data, we tested the evolutionary relations...

We provide several lines of evidence to delimit a new species of Hyloscirtus and define its phylogenetic position inside the Hyloscirtus bogotensis group. The new species is the sister taxon to Hyloscirtus mashpi and is related to a clade formed by H. alytolylax and a putative new species from the province of El Oro in, southwestern Ecuador. Hylosc...

There are currently 3,900 recognized, extant snake species belonging to 529 genera globally (Uetz et al. 2021; this study), making snakes one of the most diverse major groups of squamates. Of the 665 currently recognized species that were described between 2001 and 2020 (a ~17% increase in total species), ~34% of these (226 species) were described...

In this work, we propose a ladybird beetle detector based on a deep learning classifier and the weighted Hausdorff distance as a loss function. The detector was trained and validated using a ten-fold cross-validation method on a database composed of 2,633 wildlife images with ladybird beetles. Despite the detector performance was assessed using fou...

In the Neotropics, Panopinae spider flies are the most diverse within Acroceridae, specializing as endoparasites of mygalomorph spiders. Camposella insignata Cole, 1919 is one of the most enigmatic flies within this subfamily, given its conspicuously enlarged antennal flagella and apparent rarity, with only two specimens known to this day. This pap...

Updated IUCN Red List assessment of Nymphargus balionotus.

Harmonia axyridis is a ladybird extensively used around the world for biological control of agricultural pests. However, it has become invasive in several countries, producing negative ecological and socio-economic impacts. Herein, we review the invasion history of the Harlequin Ladybird Harmonia axyridis (Pallas, 1773) in Ecuador. Although first r...

We describe two new species of salamanders of the genus Oedipina, subgenus Oe-dopinola, from two localities on the northwestern foothills of Ecuador, at elevations between 921 and 1,067 m. These are the southernmost members of the genus. We examined different museum collections and we found just three specimens of Oedipina from Ecuador, obtained th...

Southernmost record of Rhinobothryum bovallii (Andersson 1916), new country records and notes of distribution range of Anolis lyra (Poe, Velasco, Miyata and Williams 2009), Corallus blombergi (Rendahl and Vestergren 1941) and, Spilotes megalolepis (Linnaeus 1758), are provided from specimens collected in Cerro de Hayas forest, Guayas province, sout...

Harmonia axyridis is a ladybird extensively used around the world for biological control of agricultural pest. However, it has become invasive in several countries, producing negative ecological and socio-economic impacts. Herein, we review the invasion history of the Harlequin Ladybird Harmonia axyridis (Pallas, 1773) in Ecuador. Although first re...

Glassfrogs (family: Centrolenidae) represent a fantastic radiation (~150 described species) of Neotropical anurans that originated in South America and dispersed into Central America. In this study, we review the systematics of Ecuadorian glassfrogs, providing species accounts of all 60 species, including three new species described herein. For all...

An Andean fox was transferred to the Wildlife Hospital of the Universidad San Francisco de Quito for evaluation of injuries caused by a run over. Clinical signs of hypovolemic shock were detected. Radiographies showed multiple pelvic fractures and free fluid in retroperitoneal cavity. The presumptive diagnosis was hemorrhagic shock caused by blood...

Accurate and detailed species distribution maps are fundamental for documenting and interpreting biological diversity. For snakes, an ecologically diverse group of reptiles, syntheses and detailed data on distribution patterns remain scarce. We present the first comprehensive collection of detailed, voucher-based, point-locality, range maps for all...

La Lista Roja es una herramienta para las instituciones de manejo y científicas para determinar las prioridades de conservación. La anterior versión fue realizada en 2002, en donde solo se incorporó 247 especies. La IUCN recomienda que la actualización se realice cada 5-10 años. Por lo tanto, la actualización de la Lista Roja de las Aves del Ecuado...

La Lista Roja es una herramienta para las instituciones de manejo y científicas para determinar las prioridades de conservación. La anterior versión fue realizada en 2002, en donde solo se incorporó 247 especies. La IUCN recomienda que la actualización se realice cada 5-10 años. Por lo tanto, la actualización de la Lista Roja de las Aves del Ecuado...

Listed as Data Deficient on the basis that nothing is known of this species other than that it was reportedly collected from an unknown locality in Ecuador, and it has not been rediscovered since it was described nearly 70 years ago.

Tradicionalmente la Costa Pacífica del norte de América del Sur es dividida en dos grandes bioregiones, al norte el Chocó y al sur la Costa Pacífico Ecuatorial o Tumbes. Sin embargo, los patrones biogeográficos en esta porción de Sudamérica son más complejos y objeto de discusión por la alta heterogenidad y recambio en la composición de las comunid...

Las serpientes de Galápagos están entre los vertebrados terrestres menos estudiados del archipiélago. Sus variaciones morfológicas, así como también las características inherentes a su hábitat son todavía confusas y poco conocidas. En este estudio proveemos un análisis morfológico, morfométrico y ecológico de la serpiente corredora de Galápagos (i....

A new species of frog of the genus Pristimantis is described from the paramos of the Nudo de Cajanuma, Podocarpus National Park, on the border between the provinces of Loja and Zamora-Chinchipe, Ecuador. The new species is readily distinguished from all other species of Pristimantis by its large body size (snout-vent length: 50.0–50.5 mm in adult f...

Since 1984 there have been no records of Rhaebo colomai (Hoogmoed, 1985) within the territory of Ecuador. This species was known from 2 localities in the province of Carchi, northwestern Ecuador, and the department of Nariño, southwestern Colombia, which were reported in 1979 and 2015, respectively. We report the recent sightings of R. colomai at 3...

We describe a new species of Pristimantis from the montane forest of the Río Zuñag Ecological Reserve, upper basin of the Pastaza River, Ecuador. Pristimantis mallii sp. n. is characterized by a snout-vent length of 11.6-21.3 mm in adult males (n = 12), 22.6-34.3 mm in adult females (n = 8), and is compared morphologically and genetically with Pris...

We describe a new glassfrog from Río Manduriacu Reserve, Imbabura Province, on the Pacific slopes of the Ecuadorian Andes. The new species can be distinguished from most other glassfrogs by having numerous yellow spots on the dorsum and lacking membranes among fingers. Both morphological and molecular data support the placement of the species in th...

Las variables ambientales son importantes parámetros relacionados con la ocupación y detección de la fauna silvestre; pero esta información a escala local sobre pequeños vertebrados es limitada a pocos algunos taxones. Varios grupos de anfibios, como las ranas de cristal de la familia Centrolenidae, no cuentan con datos publicados sobre la correlac...

La principal amenaza a la biodiversidad son las especies invasivas. En San Cristóbal, hay cuatro especies de gecos introducidos y dos endémicas (Phyllodactylus leii y Phyllodactylus darwini). La información sobre distribución, abundancia y relaciones interespecíficas es escasa. En este estudio estimamos la abundancia relativa y distribución de geco...

Rhaebo olallai IUCN Assessment

A molecular phylogeny of the Neotropical snail-eating snakes (tribe Dipsadini) is presented including 43 (24 for the first time) of the 77 species, sampled for both nuclear and mitochondrial genes. Morphological and phylogenetic support was found for four new species of Dipsas and one of Sibon , which are described here based on their unique combin...