Shirley Jennifer Serrano Rojas

• Biologist
• National University of Saint Anthony the Abbot in Cuzco

The efficacy of protected areas is tied to the management of surrounding areas. Still, the importance of buffer zones for biodiversity conservation is overlooked. Manu Biosphere Reserve is one of the most biodiverse places on earth, yet destructive land-use practices are degrading the ecological integrity of its buffer zone. To better understand th...

The Amazonian poison frog genus Ameerega is one of the largest yet most understudied of the brightly colored genera in the anuran family Dendrobatidae, with 30 described species ranging throughout tropical South America. Phylogenetic analyses of Ameerega are highly discordant, lacking consistency due to variation in data types and methods, and ofte...

Aim: Community-level assessments of how biodiversity responds to disturbance within forest habitats are often biased towards terrestrial-based surveys. However, recent research suggests that arboreal communities of several indicator groups (ants, amphibians, beetles and butterflies) are more susceptible to human disturbance than their terrestrial...

The Cerros del Sira in Peru is known to hold a diverse composition of endemic birds, amphibians and plants as a result of its geographical isolation, yet its mammalian community remains poorly known. There is increasing awareness of the threats to high-elevation species but studying them is often hindered by rugged terrain. We present the first cam...

The only known population of Sira curassow Pauxi koepckeae resides within the Sira Communal Reserve, a chain of isolated and high-elevation outcrops of the Peruvian Andes. The species has previously been detected on just a handful of occasions, is thought to number less than 400 adult individuals and is Critically Endangered according to the Intern...

We describe and name a new species of poison-dart frog from the Amazonian slopes of the Andes in Manu Province, Madre de Dios Department, Peru; specifically within the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve and the buffer zone of Manu National Park. Ameerega shihuemoy sp. nov. is supported by a unique combination of characters: black dorsum with cream to ligh...

A bilingual Spanish/English field guide for amphibians in southeast Peru. The Manu Biosphere Reserve is regarded as the most biodiverse place in the world for amphibians; and so the team wanted to produce a free resource to share this diversity with both a local and an international audience. It contains over 110 species of amphibian found within t...

Field Guide to the Reptile of the Cerros del Sira

Field guide to the Amphibians of the Cerros del Sira

Field observations on the reproductive biology of squamate reptiles are important to understanding the life history, ecology, and evolution of this diverse group (Vitt 1991, Ramírez-Bautista et al. 2000, Vitt et al. 2001, Werneck et al. 2009); however, these data remain sparse for many tropical species (Figueroa et al. 2013, Sousa et al. 2014). Sea...

The structure of streams and riparian systems is changing rapidly, due to logging and other human alterations. Therefore, there is a need to understand how the modification of environmental variables along streams affects species distributions. In this study we focus in the habitat selection of a stream-dwelling poison dart frog species (Ameerega s...