Javier Alejandro Maldonado OcampoPontifical Xavierian University · Department of Biology
Javier Alejandro Maldonado Ocampo
PhD
About
125
Publications
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Introduction
Javier Alejandro Maldonado Ocampo currently works at the Department of Biology, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Javier does research in Zoology, Systematics (Taxonomy) and Evolutionary Biology.
Additional affiliations
August 2003 - July 2009
Position
- Curador colección de peces, miembro del Grupo de Exploración y Monitoreo Ambiental (GEMA), Programa de Inventarios de Biodiversidad
January 2017 - present
January 2012 - December 2016
Publications
Publications (125)
Los cambios que tiene la biota que habita los cauces aguas abajo de las presas han sido objeto de numerosos estudios pero pocos se han focalizado a conocer los gradientes de recuperación aguas abajo de la presa e incluso la influencia de la estacionalidad en el pulso de caudal en este proceso. Desde el año 2000 la empresa de generación de energía I...
The Vaupés River stands out as one of the few within the Amazon basin due to its numerous rapids. These riverine fast-flowing sections not only provide habitat to highly specialized fishes but also function as natural barriers hindering the movement of fish along its course. During a fish-collecting expedition in the lower Vaupés River basin in Col...
The Neotropics harbor the most species-rich freshwater fish fauna on the planet, but the timing of that exceptional diversification remains unclear. Did the Neotropics accumulate species steadily throughout their long history, or attain their remarkable diversity recently? Biologists have long debated the relative support for these museum and cradl...
• The Amazon basin has been subjected to extreme climatic events and according to climate change projections this hydrosystem could face changes in the natural dynamic of flood cycles that support the feeding and reproduction of many fish species, threatening aquatic biodiversity.
• Protected areas (PAs) are the main tools used to safeguard the bio...
La Orinoquia andina en Colombia ha sido muy afectada por la intervención antrópica. Aunque se han realizado ejercicios de priorización de áreas importantes para la conservación que han incluido a los peces de agua dulce, estos sólo han tenido en cuenta variables como la riqueza, endemismos y estatus de amenaza, que resultan insuficientes para repre...
Catfishes of the family Astroblepidae form a group composed by 82 valid species of the genus Astroblepus inhabiting high-gradient streams and rivers throughout tropical portions of the Andean Cordillera. Little has been advanced in the systematics and biodiversity of astroblepids other than an unpublished thesis, a single regional multilocus study...
Upstream range shifts of freshwater fishes have been documented in recent years due to ongoing climate change. River fragmentation by dams, presenting physical barriers, can limit the climatically induced spatial redistribution of fishes. Andean freshwater ecosystems in the Neotropical region are expected to be highly affected by these future distu...
The Amazon Basin is an unquestionable biodiversity hotspot, containing the highest
freshwater biodiversity on earth and facing off a recent increase in anthropogenic threats.
The current knowledge on the spatial distribution of the freshwater fish species is greatly
deficient in this basin, preventing a comprehensive understanding of this hyper-div...
Conserving freshwater habitats and their biodiversity in the Amazon Basin is a growing challenge in the face of rapid anthropogenic changes. We used the most comprehensive fish‐occurrence database available (2355 valid species; 21,248 sampling points) and 3 ecological criteria (irreplaceability, representativeness, and vulnerability) to identify bi...
The Amazon Basin is an unquestionable biodiversity hotspot, containing the highest freshwater biodiversity on earth and facing off a recent increase in anthropogenic threats. The current knowledge on the spatial distribution of the freshwater fish species is greatly deficient in this basin, preventing a comprehensive understanding of this hyper-div...
Eigenmannia is one of the more taxonomically complex genera within the Gymnotiformes. Here we adopt an integrative taxonomic approach, combining osteology, COI gene sequences, and geometric morphometrics to describe three new species belonging to the E. trilineata species group from Colombian trans-Andean region. These new species increase the numb...
Energy development – as manifested by the proliferation of hydroelectric dams and increased oil and gas exploration – is a driver of change in Amazonian ecosystems. However, prevailing approaches to Amazonian ecosystem conservation that focus on terrestrial protected areas and Indigenous territories do not offer sufficient insurance against the ris...
Using the most comprehensive fish occurrence database, we evaluated the importance of ecological and historical drivers in diversity patterns of subdrainage basins across the Amazon system. Linear models reveal the influence of climatic conditions, habitat size and sub-basin isolation on species diversity. Unexpectedly, the species richness model a...
Using the most comprehensive fish occurrence database, we evaluated the importance of ecological and historical drivers in diversity patterns of subdrainage basins across the Amazon system. Linear models reveal the influence of climatic conditions, habitat size and sub-basin isolation on species diversity. Unexpectedly, the species richness model a...
Functional variation in rhodopsin, the dim-light-specialized visual pigment, frequently occurs in species inhabiting light-limited environments. Variation in visual function can arise through two processes: relaxation of selection or adaptive evolution improving photon detection in a given environment. Here, we investigate the molecular evolution o...
Accurate species delimitation is crucial for studies of phylogeny, phylogeography, ecology, conservation and biogeography. The limits of species and genera in the Characidae family are controversial due to its uncertain phylogenetic relationships, high level of morphological homoplasy and the use of ambiguous morphological characters for descriptio...
The title "AMAZON FISH database" is a working title for the Amazonian Freshwater Fish Biodiversity database that was constructed in the framework of the AMAZON FISH (ERANetLAC/DCC-0210) project.
In order to construct the AMAZON FISH database, which aims to become a high quality freshwater fish biodiversity database covering the entire Amazon draina...
This paper describes the Photafish System, an innovative technique for capturing high-quality digital images of live freshwater fishes and other aquatic organisms in the field. This system may improve and facilitate the visual documentation of such organisms to illustrate guidebooks, populate online databases and support scientific papers, particul...
DNA barcoding has been used as a universal tool for delimiting species boundaries in taxonomically challenging animal groups and currently appear to be a method in systematic studies. Additionally, the growing of methods to analyze multilocus datasets in the coalescent-based framework has provided better resolution of species limits in cases of cry...
• Assessing the effectiveness of protected areas for sustaining species and identifying priority sites for their conservation is vital for decision making, particularly for freshwater fishes in South America, the global centre of freshwater fish diversity. Several conservation planning studies have used threatened freshwater fishes or species that...
La presente investigación se hizo con el objetivo de determinar la respuesta de la metalotioneina (MT) y su relación con la presencia de As, Cr, Ni y Pb en la cuenca alta del río Bogotá y la cuenca alta del río Suarez en Grundulus bogotensis (Characiformes: Characidae) especie endémica del altiplano cundiboyacense-Colombia. Se determinaron dos loca...
En abril de 2018 realizamos un inventario rápido de peces en los sistemas de
los ríos Bajo Caguán y Alto Caquetá.
El inventario resultó en 1.426 individuos colectados pertenecientes a 150
especies, 34 familias y 8 ordenes. Las colectas de peces en estos drenajes
de cabecera ampliarán nuestra comprensión de los peces amazónicos,
llenando un vacío im...
The Superorder Characiphysae (Characiformes, Siluriformes and Gymnotiformes) has more than 77% (~10324 species) of freshwater fish species in the Neotropics. Despite their impressive species richness, we are still far from understanding the evolutionary processes that generated this diversity and the biogeographic trends that generated lineage rang...
We report two mitochondrial genomes of headstanders, derived from target capture and Illumina sequencing (HiSeq 2500 PE100). One trans-Andean species Megaleporinus muyscorum (mitochondrial consensus genome of 25 individuals) from Colombia and one cis-Andean species M. obtusidens from Argentina. Regarding M. muyscorum, mitochondrial genome has 13 pr...
We report four mitochondrial genomes of South American electric knifefishes, derived from target capture and Illumina sequencing (HiSeq 2500 PE100). Two trans-Andean species Eigenmannia humboldtii (mitochondrial consensus genome of 25 individuals) and Sternopygus aequilabiatus (mitochondrial consensus genome of 30 individuals) from Colombia and two...
A number of large hydropower dams are currently under development or in an advanced stage of planning in the Magdalena River basin, Colombia, spelling uncertainty for the Mompós Depression wetlands, one of the largest wetland systems in South America at 3400 km2. Annual large-scale inundation of floodplains and their associated wetlands regulates w...
Hemibrycon iqueima sp. nov., is described from small streams in the Magdalena drainage at the foothills of the western slope of the Eastern Cordillera of the Colombian Andes, Suarez municipality, Tolima Department, Colombia. The new species is distinguished from its congeners in the Magdalena–Cauca River basin by a combination of characters related...
Andes-to-Amazon river connectivity controls numerous natural and human systems in the greater Amazon. However, it is being rapidly altered by a wave of new hydropower development, the impacts of which have been previously underestimated. We document 142 dams existing or under construction and 160 proposed dams for rivers draining the Andean headwat...
The Cusiana River sub-basin has been identified as a priority conservation area in the Orinoco region in Colombia due to its high species diversity. This study presents an updated checklist and identification key for fishes of the Cusiana River sub-basin. The checklist was assembled through direct examination of specimens deposited in the main Colo...
The present work is part of a process to create a Catalogue of the Freshwater Fishes of Colombia and consisted in the depuration and updating of the taxonomic and geographic components of the checklist of the freshwater fishes of Colombia. An exhaustive revision of the 1435 species recorded in 2008 was necessary to: 1. Add new species described sin...
Checklist of the native freshwater fishes of Colombia
New species described from Colombia after Maldonado-Ocampo et al. (2008)
Species listed in Maldonado-Ocampo et al. (2008) with geographic distribution corrected
New records of species for Colombia after Maldonado-Ocampo et al. (2008)
Species deleted from the Colombian continental ichthyofauna
A number of large hydropower dams are currently under development or in an advanced stage of planning in the Magdalena River basin, Colombia, spelling uncertainty for the Mompós Depression wetlands, one of the largest wetland systems in South America. Annual large-scale inundation of floodplains and associated wetlands regulates water-, nutrient-,...
Initial Data Management Plan for the Amazonian Freshwater Fish Biodiversity database that will be constructed in the framework of the AMAZONFISH (ERANetLAC/DCC-0210) project.
La Serranía de La Lindosa se encuentra ubicada a 2° 30’ de latitud norte y 72° 40’ de longitud oeste. El clima es tropical, con precipitación de tipo monomodal, es decir, entre marzo y octubre es el periodo de lluvias y entre noviembre y febrero el periodo seco. El afloramiento rocoso es la característica más representativa de esta zona, lo cual ha...
Tropical rivers are experiencing an unprecedented boom in dam construction. Despite rapid dam expansion, knowledge about the ecology of tropical rivers and the implications of existing and planned dams on freshwater-dependent species remains limited. Here we evaluate fragmentation of fish species ranges, considering current and planned dams of the...
https://www.omacha.org/component/jdownloads/finish/12-documentos-de-gestion/1126-biodiversidad-en-la-cuenca-baja-y-media-del-rio-meta?Itemid=0
La ictiofauna registrada en la región del Medio Putumayo-Algodón (232 especies) es
una de las más diversas del Perú. En el contexto del paisaje del Putumayo peruano,
correspondería a la segunda de mayor riqueza luego de la Zona Reservada Yaguas
(294 especies). Además, es la tercera zona más diversa de los inventarios rápidos en
la Región Loreto des...
La contaminación ambiental es un problema de crecimiento exponencial, evidente en la mayoría de ecosistemas acuáticos y producto de actividades antropogénicas, que aportan altas concentraciones de contaminantes químicos (Vosyliene et al. 2003). La presencia de metales pesados en los sistemas acuáticos define diversas respuestas de los organismos, q...
El agua es considerada como uno de los recursos naturales más esenciales para la vida. Esto se ve relejado en el hecho de que el agua es el elemento común a la mayoría de los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible de las Naciones Unidas. Así, el agua conecta la salud pública, la seguridad alimentaria, la energía para todos, el bienestar del medio ambie...
The electric communication signals of weakly electric ghost knifefishes (Gymnotiformes: Apteronotidae) provide a valuable model system for understanding the evolution and physiology of behavior. Apteronotids produce continuous wave-type electric organ discharges (EODs) that are used for electrolocation and communication. The frequency and waveform...
Chaetostoma joropo n. sp. is described from the piedmont of the Orinoco River drainage in Colombia. The new species has been long confused with Chaetostoma milesi, a species with similar overall morphology and color pattern that is restricted to the Magdalena-Cauca River Basin. We diagnose the new species on the basis of morphology as well as a pre...
The present study describes ecological aspects of Lebiasina erythrinoides; 200 individuals were sampled throughout an annual hydrological cycle from October 2008 to September 2009 in La Calaboza stream, a Piedmont tributary of the Rio Cravo Sur. The studied population had more females than males (1.5:1) and preferred habitats dominated by shoreline...
La Amazonía Sudoccidental se está transformando rápidamente debido a la expansión de la infraestructura, la inmigración, el avance de la frontera agrícola, las actividades extractivas, y el cambio climático. A la vez, las universidades amazónicas se enfrentan a una revolución a nivel continental de la educación superior, en donde las expectativas n...
Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia share the unique geographic, cultural and biological diversity of the region where the Andes Mountains meet the Amazon. This narrow band in western South America—known as the Andean Amazon—encompasses the headwaters of the world’s largest river basin, the Amazon River. It is a global center of species richness an...
With around 15% of all described freshwater fish species in the world, the Amazon Basin is by far the most fish species-rich freshwater ecosystem on the planet. In this opinion paper, a rough evaluation is given on just how vulnerable Amazonian freshwater fishes are to ongoing climate change. And to argue that current anthropogenic threats through...
