Inventários, Estudos Sistemáticos e Biogeográficos da Mastofauna do Arquipélago do Marajó

Abstract

Located at the mouth of the Amazon River, Marajó Island has been the target of numerous faunal and floristic inventories. Despite this, little effort has been made to know the fauna components of the other islands that make up the archipelago. This work evaluates the current knowledge about the diversity of the mammal fauna of the islands of Marajó, Caviana,'Mexiana and Gurupá, in the archipelago of Marajó, providing a proposal for the interrelation of the history of occupation of the species on the four islands, and also on the east and west banks of the Tocantins River and the north bank of the Amazon River (Amapá). Data on diversity and geographic distribution were obtained from the mammal collections of the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi (MPEG), Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (MNRJ), and Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de São Paulo (MZUSP). The area cladogram was generated from a parsimony endemism analysis (PAE), which groups areas (analogous to taxa) and taxa (analogous to characters). The fauna of the archipelago was shown to be composed of elements from both banks of the Amazon River. The analysis indicated that Gurupá island is more related to the north bank, Marajó island is related to the south bank, and Caviana and Mexiana islands are composed of elements from both banks. The parsimony endemism analysis matrix is under review, and will point to a more refined relationship between the areas, shedding new light on the question of mammal biogeography in the Amazon estuary.