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First record of the bush dog Speothos venaticus in the Atlantic Forest of Minas Gerais, Brazil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2023

Alejandra Soto-Werschitz Open the ORCID record for Alejandra Soto-Werschitz [Opens in a new window] ,
Salvador Mandujano Open the ORCID record for Salvador Mandujano [Opens in a new window]  and
Marcelo Passamani Open the ORCID record for Marcelo Passamani [Opens in a new window]
Alejandra Soto-Werschitz*
Affiliation:
Departamento de Ecologia e Conservação, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia Aplicada, Instituto de Ciências Naturais, Universidade Federal de Lavras, CEP 37200-900, Lavras, Minas Gerais, Brazil
Salvador Mandujano
Affiliation:
Red de Biología y Conservación de Vertebrados, Instituto de Ecología A.C., Xalapa, Veracruz, México
Marcelo Passamani
Affiliation:
Departamento de Ecologia e Conservação, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia Aplicada, Instituto de Ciências Naturais, Universidade Federal de Lavras, CEP 37200-900, Lavras, Minas Gerais, Brazil
*
(Corresponding author, [email protected])
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The bush dog Speothos venaticus is a highly social Neotropical canid categorized globally on the IUCN Red List as Near Threatened, as Vulnerable in Brazil and as Critically Endangered in Minas Gerais, south-eastern Brazil, and the Atlantic Forest as a result of human pressure. As part of the monitoring of this mammal, during January 2019–March 2020 we placed one camera trap in each of 22 forest fragments in various landscapes in 15 municipalities in the state of Minas Gerais and one municipality in the state of Rio de Janeiro. On average, each camera trap was active for 4.3 months in each fragment. In a total of 2,856 trap-days we obtained the first record of S. venaticus in south-eastern Minas Gerais, c. 2 km from Serra de Santa Rita Mítzi Brandão Biological Reserve. This is the northernmost record of S. venaticus in the Atlantic Forest and highlights the importance of forest remnants in a fragmented landscape for this species. Further monitoring of this area should be a priority, to increase knowledge regarding the distribution of this species and for developing conservation strategies appropriate to these fragmented landscapes.

Keywords

Atlantic ForestBrazilbush dogcamera trappingneotropical canidMinas GeraisSpeothos venaticus
Type
Short Communication
Information
Oryx , Volume 57 , Issue 5 , September 2023 , pp. 673 - 675
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International

The bush dog Speothos venaticus occurs in Central and South America (DeMatteo & Loiselle, Reference DeMatteo and Loiselle2008), is a strict carnivore (Beisiegel & Zuercher, Reference Beisiegel and Zuercher2005; Lima et al., Reference Lima, Jorge and Dalponte2009) and is considered the smallest and most social Neotropical canid (Azevedo et al., Reference Azevedo, Lemos, Costa, Rocha and Freitas Junior2016; Oliveira et al., Reference Oliveira, Michalski, Botelho, Michalski, Calouro and Desbiez2018). Previous research has examined the conservation status, distribution and ecological requirements of this species (DeMatteo & Loiselle, Reference DeMatteo and Loiselle2008; Oliveira, Reference Oliveira2009; Michalski, Reference Michalski2010; Ferreira et al., Reference Ferreira, Oliveira, Paula, Rodrigues and Carmo2015; Lima et al., Reference Lima, Jorge, Jorge and Morato2015; Jorge et al., Reference Jorge, Beisiegel, Lima, Jorge, Leite-Pitman, de Paula, Chiarello, de Aguiar, Cerquera, de Melo, Rodrigues and da Silva2018). Nevertheless, because of its elusive behaviour, low density, fragmented occurrence and large home range, the biology of the bush dog is poorly known (DeMatteo & Kochanny, Reference DeMatteo and Kochanny2004; Michalski & Pérez, Reference Michalski and Peres2005; DeMatteo & Loiselle, Reference DeMatteo and Loiselle2008; Lima et al., Reference Lima, DeMatteo, Jorge, Jorge, Dalponte, Lima and Klorfine2012, Reference Lima, Jorge, Jorge and Morato2015; Azevedo et al., Reference Azevedo, Lemos, Costa, Rocha and Freitas Junior2016; Tiepolo et al., Reference Tiepolo, Quadros and Pitman2016; Jorge et al., Reference Jorge, Beisiegel, Lima, Jorge, Leite-Pitman, de Paula, Chiarello, de Aguiar, Cerquera, de Melo, Rodrigues and da Silva2018; Oliveira et al., Reference Oliveira, Michalski, Botelho, Michalski, Calouro and Desbiez2018).

The bush dog is categorized as Near Threatened globally on the IUCN Red List (DeMatteo et al., Reference DeMatteo, Michalski and Leite-Pitman2011), as Vulnerable on the Brazilian National List and as Threatened in several Brazilian states and all biomes (Jorge et al., Reference Jorge, Beisiegel, Lima, Jorge, Leite-Pitman, de Paula, Chiarello, de Aguiar, Cerquera, de Melo, Rodrigues and da Silva2018). In the Atlantic Forest, the bush dog is categorized as Critically Endangered (Jorge et al., Reference Jorge, Beisiegel, Lima, Jorge, Leite-Pitman, de Paula, Chiarello, de Aguiar, Cerquera, de Melo, Rodrigues and da Silva2018), with a few records in the states of São Paulo (Beisiegel, Reference Beisiegel2009), Paraná (Fusco-Costa & Ingberman, Reference Fusco-Costa and Ingberman2013; Tiepolo et al., Reference Tiepolo, Quadros and Pitman2016), Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul (Fick et al., Reference Fick, Hendgen, Kunzler and da Silva2021) and Mato Grosso do Sul, in the Atlantic Forest and the Cerrado ecotone (Teribele et al., Reference Teribele, Concone, Godoy, Bianchi, Santos and Mauro2012). In the state of Minas Gerais, the bush dog is categorized as Critically Endangered (COPAM, 2010; Jorge et al., Reference Jorge, Beisiegel, Lima, Jorge, Leite-Pitman, de Paula, Chiarello, de Aguiar, Cerquera, de Melo, Rodrigues and da Silva2018) and was considered probably extinct (Costa, Reference Costa, Machado, Fonseca, Machado, Aguiar and Lins1998) until the species was recorded in the north and west of the state (Ferreira et al., Reference Ferreira, Oliveira, Paula, Rodrigues and Carmo2015; Azevedo et al., Reference Azevedo, Lemos, Costa, Rocha and Freitas Junior2016; Silva et al., Reference Silva, Serafim, Rocha, Fonseca and Ferreira2022). Here we report the first record of the bush dog in southern Minas Gerais, the current northernmost known occurrence of this species in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest.

We conducted this study in 22 fragments in various landscapes in 16 municipalities in south-eastern Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro (Fig. 1). The temperature range in this region is 12.2–19.8 °C and the annual precipitation is 1,476–2,175 mm (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, 2012). The lowlands are predominantly humid, and the montane areas have dry or rainy winters. During January 2019–March 2020, we placed a single camera trap (Bushnell HD, Bushnell, Overland Park, USA) in each forest fragment for a mean of 4.3 months, at altitudes of 887–2,087 m. We followed the protocols for camera trapping proposed by Rovero & Spitale (Reference Rovero, Spitale, Rovero and Zimmermann2016) and Sharma et al. (Reference Sharma, Fiechter, George, Young, Alexander and Bijoor2020).

Fig. 1 Locations of all camera traps and the one at which the bush dog Speothos venaticus was recorded (Plate 1), and the nearest historical (Lund, Reference Lund1842) and recent (Azevedo et al., Reference Azevedo, Lemos, Costa, Rocha and Freitas Junior2016; Ferreira et al., Reference Ferreira, Oliveira, Paula, Rodrigues and Carmo2015; Silva et al., Reference Silva, Serafim, Rocha, Fonseca and Ferreira2022) records in Minas Gerais, Brazil.

Plate 1 The two camera-trap photographs of the bush dog Speothos venaticus obtained on 20 May 2019 in the municipality of Santa Rita do Sapuçaí, in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil (Fig. 1).

After 2,856 trap-days, we obtained two photographs of one bush dog (Plate 1) in the municipality of Santa Rita do Sapuçaí (Fig. 1) at 7.40 on 20 May 2019. The images are not clear but typical characteristics of the species can be distinguished, such as its short legs and tail, typical leg shape and elongated, cylindrical and thick body. We obtained five independent assessments from Brazilian carnivore specialists to confirm that these images were of a bush dog. The nearest known records in the state of Minas Gerais are 474–797 km north of this new record (Fig. 1). The survey effort was less than that required to detect the bush dog in other localities, where recording the species required 4,818 (Beisiegel, Reference Beisiegel2009), 4,112 (Fusco-Costa & Ingberman, Reference Fusco-Costa and Ingberman2013), 6,000, 7,000 and 27,000 (Ferreira et al., Reference Ferreira, Oliveira, Paula, Rodrigues and Carmo2015), 4,036 (Azevedo et al., Reference Azevedo, Lemos, Costa, Rocha and Freitas Junior2016) and 15,888 trap-days (Oliveira et al., Reference Oliveira, Michalski, Botelho, Michalski, Calouro and Desbiez2018).

We recorded the bush dog in a 164-ha fragment of seasonal forest at an altitude of 1,014 m. The fragment is 2 km from Serra de Santa Rita Mítzi Brandão Biological Reserve, a conservation unit and water recharge region with the Sapucaí River and seven main springs. The bush dog could be using this area as a corridor to access areas with greater availability of forest cover and water. A long-term monitoring project for the bush dog in this area would increase our knowledge of this species and, through its use as a flagship species, help to promote increased connectivity in the Atlantic Forest through corridors and stepping-stones that favour animal dispersal among fragmented populations.

Acknowledgements

We thank the specialists who confirmed the bush dog record: Ricardo Sampaio, Gabriela Butti de Freitas Guilherme, Malu Jorge and Rodrigo Jorge (Centro Nacional de Pesquisa e Conservação de Mamíferos Carnívoros–National Predator Center) and Adriano Garcia Chiarello (Universidade de São Paulo–Ribeirão Preto). This project was partially funded by the Biodiversity Conservation in Hyper-fragmented Tropical Forest project supported by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico. ASW received a PhD scholarship from the PAEC-OAS-GCUB-Program–Organization of American States and Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior.

Author contributions

Study design: ASW, MP; fieldwork: MP; data processing, analysis and writing: all authors.

Conflicts of interest

None.

Ethical standards

This research followed ethical procedures for conducting camera-trapping (Sharma et al., Reference Sharma, Fiechter, George, Young, Alexander and Bijoor2020), the cameras only recorded photographs of wildlife, and this research otherwise abided by the Oryx guidelines on ethical standards.

Data availability

Not applicable.

Footnotes

*

Also at: Departamento de Biología, Universidad de Los Andes, Mérida, Venezuela

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Figure 0

Fig. 1 Locations of all camera traps and the one at which the bush dog Speothos venaticus was recorded (Plate 1), and the nearest historical (Lund, 1842) and recent (Azevedo et al., 2016; Ferreira et al., 2015; Silva et al., 2022) records in Minas Gerais, Brazil.

Figure 1

Plate 1 The two camera-trap photographs of the bush dog Speothos venaticus obtained on 20 May 2019 in the municipality of Santa Rita do Sapuçaí, in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil (Fig. 1).