Inventário da fauna de pequenos mamíferos não-voadores do parque ambiental de Belém, município de Belém, estado do Pará

Abstract

The municipality of Belém is included in the area of endemism called Belém, which covers 199,211 km. However, only 17.66% of this area corresponds to conservation units, 1.4% of which is under full protection. The Belém Environmental Park (PAB) has an area of 1,300 ha, located in the metropolitan area of this municipality. Despite concentrating the largest research centers in Pará, the study region has only three inventories of its mastofauna, carried out between the 1950s and 1990s. An inventory of small non-flying mammals of the PAB was conducted from August 1 to 26, 2007 (dry season) and January 11 to February 4, 2008 (rainy season). Drop traps consisting of 60-liter buckets and conventional Sherman and cage traps were used, uniformly arranged in three vertical strata of the forest (floor, understory and canopy), the latter being used only in the first field campaign. These traps were distributed in eight collection sites, totaling a sampling effort of 4000 bucket-nights and 1930 trap-nights. In addition, a survey of specimens of small non-flying mammals from the PAB, deposited in the Mastozoology Collection of the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, collected between 1900 and 1990, was carried out in order to compare the current community in the study area with that existing in periods prior to 1990. Forty-three specimens belonging to 10 species were captured, four of them from the Order Didelphimorphia: Marmosopscf. Pinheiroi (N= 12),Micoureus demerarae(N=6), Philanderopossum (N=6) and Marmosa Murina (N= 2); and six of the Order Rodentia: Oecomys paricola (N=8), Oecomys roberti (N=3), Proechimys roberti (N=2), Nectomys melanius (N= 1), Hylaeamys megacephalus (N=1) and Oligoryzomyssp. (N=1). Among these, 11 were collected in conventional traps and 32 in pitfall traps, resulting in a capture success of 0.75 % and 0.8 %, respectively. The current inventory missed 13 species, five of marsupials and eight of rodents, which had been collected previously. These results suggest that the current fauna of small non-flying mammals seems to represent only a sample of the diversity that once occurred in this area, and that the urbanization of the municipality of Belém has been negatively affecting it.