Mauro Schiaffini

Laboratorio de Filogeografía, Taxonomía Integrativa y Ecología (LFTIE)

Purpose of Review Habitat fragmentation is recognized as a central issue in conservation biology, provoking a discontinuity in the distribution of resources. This in turn, leads to isolation of populations and increases extinction risks. South America holds a very diverse and endemism-rich fauna of mammals, which are being increasingly threatened b...

The crab-eating fox Cerdocyon thous is one of South America's most common species of canids; its gener-alist habits and plasticity allowed the species to adapt to numerous habitats and human presence. In 2020, we registered a specimen of C. thous on a trap camera placed in the vicinity of the Huaco River in La Rioja Province, Argentina. This record...

El zorro colorado Lycalopex culpaeus (Molina 1782) es considerado como un depredador oportunista y hábitat-generalista y, aunque es supuestamente nocturno, también es capaz de adaptar su comportamiento en función del nicho ecológico más adecuado, adoptando también patrones de actividad diurna. El objetivo de este estudio fue evaluar su patrón diari...

El zorro colorado Lycalopex culpaeus (Molina 1782) es considerado como un depredador oportunista y hábitat-generalista y, aunque es supuestamente nocturno, también es capaz de adaptar su comportamiento en función del nicho ecológico más adecuado, adoptando también patrones de actividad diurna. El objetivo de este estudio fue evaluar su patrón diari...

El pudú Pudu puda (Molina 1782), uno de los ciervos más pequeños del mundo, es una especie endémica y enigmática que habita los bosques templados de Argentina y Chile. Debido a su importante papel ecológico y al escaso conocimiento de la ecología de la especie, realizamos un estudio de los patrones de actividad del pudú con el fin de aportar inform...

El pudú Pudu puda (Molina 1782), uno de los ciervos más pequeños del mundo, es una especie endémica y enigmática que habita los bosques templados de Argentina y Chile. Debido a su importante papel ecológico y al escaso conocimiento de la ecología de la especie, realizamos un estudio de los patrones de actividad del pudú con el fin de aportar inform...

‘Rewilding’ is a nature conservation strategy gaining prominence worldwide. Established in the Northern Hemisphere, rewilding initiatives have increasingly been proposed in Argentina, but their relative merits, feasibility of implementation and accountability have lacked adequate analysis and discussion. Recently, 125 scientists and practitioners w...

En los últimos años se han desarrollado en Argentina distintas intervenciones relacionadas con el rewilding (o re-asilvestramiento), abarcando una variedad de especies (e.g., grandes carnívoros, ungulados, psitácidos) y ecorregiones (e.g., Chaco Húmedo y Seco, Estepa Patagónica). El reasilvestramiento es definido como una estrategia aplicada en el...

The American mink Neogale vison, introduced in Argentina since the beginnings of the XX century, is known locally as a mayor threat to biodiversity. Within the existing control methods, eradication and population control are implemented. The latter has been carried out in Los Alerces National Park since 2019, with live-capture traps and calculation...

The concentration of people living in small areas has increased in the last decade, with more than half of the world's population living in cities. This is particularly true for Latin America, a region with no particular high contribution to the world total population, but hosts several large cities. The increase in urbanization causes several thre...

Climate has long been recognized as one of the main determinants of the geographical distribution of species. Variations associated with primary productivity in temperature, rainfall, and photoperiod can affect survival and reproduction, affecting the peripheries of geographical distributions. The importance of graphical visualization of these dist...

Leopardus is a genus that, despite currently being widely distributed in South America, shows until now a fragmentary fossil record. Among Leopardus, L. pardalis is the largest species, having an historical range that includes tropical and subtropical habitats from southern U.S.A. to southern South America but, as usual in the ocelot lineage, fossi...

The Guigna Leopardus guigna is an endemic felid of the Valdivian Temperate Forests in Argentna and Chile, and of the Chilean Matorral ecoregion. It is a small-sized felid (1.6–2.5 kg), one of the least known wild felids, and categorized as Vulnerable to extncton. Here, we present two new reliable records in Los Alerces Natonal Park, Chubut Province...

The subspecies concept is one of the most controversial in Linnean taxonomy. In the past, subspecies were described without a clear conceptual framework, triggering confusion and motivating criticism of the very concept of a subspecies. At present, subspecies are conceived as aggregates of populations that are geographically isolated, are composed...

Recently, Agnolin et al. (2019) described 14 new species of mammals, including 12 rodents, one bat, and one carnivore, and one new subspecies of rodent. In addition, these authors proposed several other nomenclatorial acts: some nominal forms were removed from synonymies and hypothesized as distinct species, at the time that three new genera, one s...

Assessment of the conservation status for Argentina.

Vespertilionid species are widely distributed in South America. They are highly diverse, with physiological and behavioral adaptations which allow them to extend their distributions into temperate areas. In Patagonia, this family is represented by seven species in three genera ( Histiotus , Lasiurus and Myotis ). In this study, we analyzed the dist...

South American foxes are included in the monophyletic genus Lycalopex, with several recent species. Here, the influence of environment about cranial size and shape variations of Lycalopex gymnocercus was explicitly addressed. 3D landmark-based methodology was used to acquire morphometric data. Each record locality was georeferenced and assigned bot...

Schiaffini, Mauro I.; Ercoli, Marcos D.; Díaz, Gabriela (2019). Lyncodon patagonicus. En: SAyDS–SAREM (eds.) Categorización 2019 de los mamíferos de Argentina según su riesgo de extinción. Lista Roja de los mamíferos de Argentina. Versión digital: http://cma.sarem.org.ar.

There are three extant species of hog-nosed skunks widely distributed from North to South America, with a dubious number of fossil species. The oldest record comes from the early Pliocene of Mexico, while several Pleistocene species were registered from Argentina (Conepatus cordubensis, C. mercedensis and C. primaevus, plus C. altiramus with a dubi...

The record of Guloninae presents mainly a Holarctic distribution, with only Eira barbara occurring in South America (SA). This lineage immigrated from Central America at least in the Pleistocene. The fossil record of Guloninae for SA is limited to a few known specimens of Eira from Late Pleistocene of Brazil. We report a new specimen of E. barbara...

Bergmann's rule is one of the most known biological rules and relates the body size variation to changes in latitude or temperature. Most recently, a “resource rule” had been presented, which explains several trends in body size, as a consequence of availability of resources. South American Conepatus chinga is one of the most widespread small carni...

Limiting abiotic conditions might shape boundaries of species distribution, while biotic factors influence such distributions through interspecific relationships. When two morphologically and or/ecologically similar species are geographically overlapped, a distribution displacement or a change in size or morphology is expected to minimize competiti...

Almost all large carnivorans (Carnivora; > 20 kg) that inhabited South America became extinct around the Late Pleistocene–Early Holocene transition. Two exceptions were species of coyote-sized Dusicyon, one insular (D. australis) and one continental (D. avus). The extinction of the former is a resolved matter, but that of D. avus, found in the Pata...

The vespertilionid bat Histiotus macrotus occurs in western Argentina, central regions of Chile and south of Argentina and Chile, and it may be also present in Bolivia and southern Peru. In this work, we analyzed the geographic and potential distribution of a poorly known species of South American bat. As a tool, environmental niche modeling has be...

Remarkable adaptations in the Carnivora have evolved as a way of dealing with feeding competition, accentuating hypocarnivorous or hypercarnivorous morphotypes. The Carnivora is a highly successful order with 47 living species in South America. Their history in South America is recent, and includes few lineages that arrived before the Panamanian br...

The Patagonian weasel (Lyncodon patagonicus) is one of the least known carnivores from South America, and excluding some contributions, knowledge of it seems anecdotal. It is supposed to inhabit herbaceous and arid environments of Argentina and Chile. Here we assess the potential distribution of the Patagonian weasel both during the present and the...

Despite recent taxonomic evaluations of Mephitidae and North American hog-nosed skunks, southern South American species of Conepatus have not been thoroughly examined in a systematic context. Conepatus chinga and Conepatus humboldtii were described more than 150 years ago, based on external characters such as hair coloration and size. Although hist...

Histiotus magellanicus (Philippi, 1866) is a poorly known Patagonian bat. Here we report on nine newly captured specimens and one unpublished locality from museum specimen that significantly improve our knowledge of this species' distribution, by incorpo-rating two Argentine provinces and reducing the distributional gap between northern and souther...

Histiotus magellanicus (Philippi, 1866) is a poorly known Patagonian bat. Here we report on nine newly captured specimens and one unpublished locality from museum specimen that significantly improve our knowledge of this species' distribution, by incorporating two Argentine provinces and reducing the distributional gap between northern and southern...

The aim of this work was to study the patterns of habitat use of the wild boar in Los Alerces National Park, Argentina. We surveyed 262 transects, totaling 26.2 km, searching for fresh signs of the species. The wild boar used low elevations more intensively (600 to 700 m asl) than higher elevations, and forests of Nothofagus dombeyi and N. antarcti...

The small mammal fauna from northwestern Chubut Province (Argentina) is poorly known. We herein report small mammal assemblages from three new localities: Sierras de Tecka, an extra-Andean system elevated 900 m.a.sl.; Estancia La Mimosa on the Tecka river valley (at ca. 650 m.a.sl.); and Arroyo Pescado (at ca. 620 m.a.sl.) 40 km north of the other...