Riqueza e abundância relativa de mastofauna em uma unidade de conservação: estudo de caso no Parque Nacional do Iguaçu

Abstract

The Atlantic Forest is considered one of the world’s biggest biodiversity hotspots and, in Brazilian territory is the biome with the biggest mammal diversity, with about 318 species in its area. Due to its importance, its conservation is crucial to the preservation of species within its area, including mammals, group of interest in researches. Currently, Conservation Units has been obtaining great success with its work through publication of local flagship species, pleasant to the public, to increase their profit and continue to work on animals’ conservation and their habitats. The Iguaçu National Park, located in Foz do Iguaçu, PR, Brazil, has achieved great advances in its work thanks to flagship species current in the park, as the jaguar. However, despite the importance of studies about this group, information about mammals is scarce because of their habits and characteristics, that make researches difficult. Thus, data collection methods are of great relevance when working with mammals, with photographic traps being one of the most successful methods nowadays. The present work had as objective to analyze the richness of species, density and relative abundance of mammals in Iguaçu National Park, through its monitoring with the help of photographic traps spread out in human and animal tracks, on the park area, at random, staying on the field for at least five consecutive days, working on video mode 24 hours a day to contribute on studies of this important group. Were identified 909 individuals distributed in 23 species, 15 distributed in 3 genres, 43 individuals distributed in 2 families and 1 individual in 1 order. It was verified that the area has high diversity through the calculated indexes (Margalef, Shannon-Wiener and Simpson), emphasizing the importance of conservation units’ role in the maintenance of these communities.