The fauna in Serrán Private Reservation

A synopsis of the anphibians, the reptiles, and the birds at the first conservation area created in Piura Department.

 

By Adam Castillo, Luis Farro, Rubén Hoyos, Berlín García, Lindsay Noé, Renzo Seminario, Armando Ugaz y Diana Pierina Carreño.

 

AMID HUARMACA AND SALITRAL (MORROPÓN), Peru – The dry forests as increasing their altitude, become special ecosystems. They host a special flora and fauna as well as an own biological riches, and as the conservation is currently one of the most important tools to control the lost of biological biodiversity, it’s important to have information which can be reliable for becoming to find such as zones.

 

The anuran fauna of Huancabamba Range, Peruvian Northern, consists in 21 species, 10 of them are endemic. The most species and the total of endemic ones occur in the cloud mountain forest at the western slope and at the top of the range, where the most species are eleuterodactilus (=Pristimantis) that have a direct development of terrestrial eggs. Only 5 species occur at the tropical dry forest in elevations below 5610 feet of the range (Duelman & Wild, 1993).

 

The reptiles of Peruvian Coast, including some species of Equatorial Dry Forest, have been previously investigated by authors who provide basic information about the taxonomy and ecology in lizards of Dicrodon genera and Tropidurus genera, Phylodactilus-genera geckos, and snakes.

 

Later in 1990s decade, the research of herpetofauna in Peruvian Northwestern was mainly located at mountain forests of Andean western slope, remaining the Equatorial Dry Forest like a zone empty of information. However, it’s assumed as a fact that the herpetofauna of Equatorial Dry Forest Ecoregion of Andean-Pacific slope of Peru is formed by 6 species of anphibians and 33 species of reptiles which 2 species of anphibians and 13 species of reptiles are endemic to this ecoregion (Venegas, 2005).

 

Franke and Salinas (2007) have registered a total of 151 species of wild birds for Piura included in 15 orders and 22 families. The orders with most number of species are passerins (96 species) , apodiforms (16), and falconiforms (11). The families with most species are embericidae (36 species), Tyranidae (19), and Trochilidae(14).

 

From the total of registered species, none is included in any conservation category of Peru’s National Institute of Natural Resources. The Peruvian corttarama or plant cutter (Phytotoma raimondii) is considered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature like an endangered species while the red masked parakeet (Aratinga erythrogenys) is in the almost-threatened category.

 

Eight are endemic: Tumbés hummingbird (Leucippus baeri), the black-necked woodpecker (Colaptes atricollis), the coastal miner (Geositta peruviana), the rufus tuft (Myiarchus semirufus), the Peruvian plant cutter (Phytotoma raimondii), the gray chirito or tropical gnattcatcher (Polioptila plúmbea), the cinereus finch (Piezorhina cinérea), and the white-winged brush-finch (Atlapetes leucopterus).

 

The authors have pertained to Piura National University’s Biological Sciences Professional School. You can contact the team and support them by writing at biocodes_8@hotmail.com

Produced by Juán Manuel Manchay, Adam Castillo, Luis Farro, Rubén Hoyos, Berlín García, Lindsay Noé, Renzo Seminario, Armando Ugaz, and Diana Pierina Carreño. Edited by  Angel Ramos. Translated and adapted by Nelson Peñaherrera. FACTORTIERRA does not necessarily endorse the authors’ opinions.