Diego F. Cisneros-Heredia

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

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

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...

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...

We describe a new species of Linothele Karsch, 1879 from the southeastern slopes of the Andes in Ecuador. The new species can be distinguished from all congeners by the presence of abundant bright whitish-golden curly setae on the carapace; a pattern-less grey abdomen in adults, with short whitish-golden setae, short black setae and long and erecte...

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...

The Galapagos Archipelago has been world-famous since Darwin’s visit and is recognized for its species radiation and high levels of endemism. However, Galapagos snakes of the genus Pseudalsophis remained poorly known until recently. The taxonomy of this snake radiation was in turmoil until 2018, when nine species were recognized and its origin and...

Studies on genetic variability amongst native and introduced species contribute to a better understanding of the genetic diversity of species along their autochthonous distribution and identify possible routes of introduction. Gonatodes caudiscutatus is a gecko native to western Ecuador and introduced to the Galapagos Islands. Despite being a succe...

The type material of Pamphobeteus ultramarinus Schmidt, 1995 and P. vespertinus (Simon, 1889) are redescribed. The male of P. lapola Sherwood, Gabriel, Brescovit & Lucas, 2022 is described for the frst time. Six new species are described: P. amazonas Sherwood, Gabriel, Peñaherrera-R., Cisneros-Heredia., León-E., Brescovit & Lucas sp. nov. from Braz...

Systematic assessments of species extinction risk at regular intervals are necessary for informing conservation action1,2. Ongoing developments in taxonomy, threatening processes and research further underscore the need for reassessment3,4. Here we report the findings of the second Global Amphibian Assessment, evaluating 8,011 species for the Inter...

Systematic assessments of species extinction risk at regular intervals are necessary for informing conservation action1,2. Ongoing developments in taxonomy, threatening processes and research further underscore the need for reassessment3,4. Here we report the findings of the second Global Amphibian Assessment, evaluating 8,011 species for the Inter...

Los insectos comestibles se han propuesto como alternativa sostenible para el medio ambiente y la ganadería (1). En respuesta a la promoción de los insectos como alimento por parte de la FAO, el consumo de insectos es ahora una tendencia a nivel mundial. Sin embargo, a diferencia de la ganadería tradicional, la información disponible sobre su compo...

We describe a new species of giant crab spider of the genus Sadala Simon, 1880 collected in Lowland Evergreen rainforests at the Tiputini Biodiversity Station, Yasuni Biosphere Reserve, Amazonian Ecuador. This new species corresponds to the firstrecord of the genus from Ecuador. Females of the new species of Sadala are similar to S. punicea and S....

The marine iguana populations of San Cristóbal are the smallest of any island in the archipelago and are regarded as the highest priority for the conservation of the species. Marine iguanas depend on their tail for swimming and diving to get food while submerged, and tail damage may impact their ability to forage efficiently. We present the first t...

We describe two new species of glassfrogs of the genus Centrolene living in syntopy at La Enramada, province of Azuay, southwestern Ecuador. They were found in a small creek in montane evergreen forests at 2,900 m elevation. The first new species is distinguished from all other members of the genus Centrolene by having the following combination of...

We present the first record of Holothele longipes (L. Koch, 1875) (Araneae, Theraphosidae) from the Republic of Ecuador, based on a male specimen collected near Puerto Misahuallí, province of Napo, in the north-eastern foothills of the Andes, upper River Napo basin. This new record extends the geographic range of H. longipes by approximately 554 km...

We review the distribution of White-cheeked Pintail (Anas bahamensis rubrirostris) in mainland Ecuador and show that the species has expanded its range significantly. Contrary to published records, A. b. rubrirostris has been present in mainland Ecuador at least since the early 20th century, although probably in low numbers. During the 20th century...

Recent surveys in the Río Negro-Sopladora National Park revealed a striking new species of Hyloscirtus . The new species is easily diagnosed from all other congeners by its large body size (64.9 mm SVL in adult female); broad dermal fringes in fingers and toes; prepollex not projected into a prepollical spine and hidden under thenar tubercle; dorsu...

Tropical dry forests are among the most threatened and yet the most biodiverse Neotropical ecosystems. However, current patterns of biological occupancy in these forests remain poorly studied. Here, we document the diversity, patterns of seasonal turnover and change of species composition over time of birds in a highly exploited but protected tropi...

Visual communication is apparently widespread among anurans, but these behaviours in many Neotropical species remain unstudied. We provide the first descriptions of visual displays in males of the Neotropical treefrog Dendropsophus carnifex (Hylidae) from three populations at Mindo, in northwestern Ecuador. We describe hind-foot lifting, foot-flagg...

We have discovered a spectacular new species of frog in the genus Hyloscirtus, belonging to the H. larinopygion species group. The adult female is characterized by a mostly black body with large bright red spots on the dorsal and ventral surface, extremities, and toe pads. The adult male is unknown. Small juveniles are characterized by a yellow bod...

Helminths are not usually considered important pathogens for birds of prey. There is a single published report of mortality in raptors due to an air sac trematode infection. We report a well-documented death case from massive infection by an air sac trematode of the family Cyclocoelidae in a wild-caught, juvenile male Snail Kite (Rostrhamus sociabi...

We review the distribution of White-cheeked Duck Anas bahamensis rubrirostris in mainland Ecuador and show that the species is expanding its range significantly. Contrary to published records, A. b. rubrirostris has been present in mainland Ecuador at least since the early 20th century, although probably in low numbers. During the 20th century, the...

Los alimentos van más allá del acto de comer y son más que productos de consumo. Cada alimento que consumimos encierra una diversidad de historias, cosmovisiones, valores, realidades, procesos y usos, que se comprenden mejor desde las perspectivas del patrimonio vivo, dinámico y diverso. Este se debe pensar simultáneamente en el tiempo, en los terr...

La música, el baile de marimba y la bomba, al igual que los saberes de cocina, con sus leyendas y sus mitos, definen el universo cultural de los afroecuatorianos. Los pueblos recrean esta herencia que, además de servirles como fortaleza y referente para sobrevivir en medio de condiciones adversas, ha enriquecido la diversidad cultural del Ecuador y...

En este capítulo se compilan instrumentos, técnicas y procedimientos referentes a la cocina afroecuatoriana del valle del Chota y de Esmeraldas. Gran parte de esta información se obtuvo mediante entrevistas y grupos focales, donde personas de diferentes comuni-dades afroecuatorianas nos enseñaron y compartieron su gran riqueza cultural en torno a l...

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...

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...

Las áreas verdes urbanas pueden alojar una importante biodiversidad y mantener recursos naturales y servicios ambientales. En un mundo cada vez más urbanizado, estas áreas juegan roles fundamentales para mitigar los impactos negativos del crecimiento urbanístico y del cambio climático, y son indispensables para un entorno saludable. Un aspecto clav...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Updated IUCN Red List assessment of Nymphargus balionotus.

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....