Proyecto Alto Purús: Biodiversity Studies

         The aquatic fauna of the Alto Purús Park has not previously been surveyed systematically. An inventory of aquatic mollusks of Rio Los Amigos below the park was conducted by C. Ituarte (Leite-Pitman et al. 2003). A rapid inventory of water bodies along the interoceanic highway between Acre and Masuco was conducted by G. Barbieri (Leite-Pitman et al. 2003). A preliminary list of fishes from the Park gathered for this proposal has 118 species (Ortega 2003a) (Fig. 3). Species-area rarefaction analysis of these data suggests the expected total is more than twice that amount (see (Albert 2005)).

         There have been several collections of fishes from other portions of the Ucayali basin (Fowler 1939  1945b, a; Kullander 1986; Ortega and Vari 1986; Ortega 1996a; Barrera 1999; Ortega 2002), from the Madeira basin in the Manu Biosphere Reserve (Ortega 1994; Ortega 1996b), and from other regions in Peruvian (Ortega 2003b; Albert 2005), (Chernoff in press) and Bolivian (Chernoff 1999b, a; Chernoff et al. 2000; Lasso 2001) Amazon. The lower portions of the Purús and Jurua rivers have been sampled adventitiously and good collections exist in Brazilian museums. Detailed inventories of fishes from river channels undertaken by the Calhamazon Project revealed many new species (Lundberg 1996; Cox-Fernandes et al. 2004). Partial fish diversity inventories have been compiled for several Amazonian floodplains (Saint-Paul 1979; Petry et al. 2003; Albert 2005; Correa et al. in review), with typical lists including about 150 species. Comparisons with other Amazonian floodplains indicate this is a significant underestimate of the actual total. Intensive surveys of fishes in the Mamirauá Reserve and surrounding Tefé region of Amazonas, Brazil recorded over 300 species from whitewater floodplains and around 600 species in total (Henderson and Crampton 1997; Henderson et al. 1998; Crampton 1999a; Crampton 2001).

         Fish inventories from the Ecuadorian Amazon include: (Chernoff et al. 2000; Bojsen and Barriga 2002; Stewart et al. 2002; Galacatos et al. 2004), and from the Colombian Amazon: (Maldonado-Ocampo 2003; Mojica 2005). The vegetation of the Alto Purús has not been systematically studied, although that of the adjacent Manu reserve is well documented (see (Pitman et al. 1999; Pitman et al. 2001, 2002; Leite-Pitman et al. 2003; Ter Steege et al. 2003; ter Steege et al. 2006) and references therein). The limnology of lowland Amazonia has been well investigated (Junk 1970, 1973; Junk 1980, 1983; Junk 1984; Crampton 1998a). The terrestrial/arboreal/volant vertebrate fauna from the Amazon of southern Peru and Bolivia is currently under intensive investigation, including studies on frogs (Ron and Pramuk 1999; Sheil and Mendelson 2001; Lotters et al. 2003; Roberts et al. 2006; Roberts et al. 2007), mammals (Brown 2001) (Boddicker et al. 2002) (Patterson 2006), and birds (Patterson et al. 1996; Bleiweiss 1998; Gonzalez 1999; Nores 1999; Voss et al. 2001; Bird 2003; Brooks 2003; Brightsmith 2004; Weigend et al. 2004; Karubian et al. 2005; Patterson 2006; Roberts et al. 2006). These studies were used by INRENA to compile biotic lists of the vascular plant and terrestrial vertebrate groups for the Alto Purús (INRENA 2001). As of this writing there have been 53 published papers since 2002 with the word 'Manu' listed in the ISI Web of Science database.
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