766 M. M. Torres‐Martínez et al.
(1) local population density, (2)range,(3) the number of habi- tat types in which the species occurs and (4) body size. In addition, we suggest factors that may have determined the rarity category of this species. As the species population den- sity has not been assessed, we documented the number of records per year since the species description. We con- sider the population density to be low if the number of records evaluated is ,1 for each 10-year interval (there are c. 10,000 records of mammals in databases for Cundinamarca, the department in which C. vestitus has been historically recorded). We also estimated the species range and related this to the rarity level using the extent of occurrence (EOO) and area of occupancy (AOO). We calculated the EOO using the minimum convex polygon (linking the known points of occurrence for the species), and the AOO by summing the area of grid squares in which the species is known (using grid squares of 2 km2 as recommended in IUCN, 2010)in GeoCAT (Bachman et al., 2011). For this we used data from six confirmed localities. Three of these are voucher specimens housed at Colombian collections and the other three are photographic records (Table 1). The photographs showed characters used to differ- entiate C. vestitus from other species in this genus: dorsal pelage with long blackish fur that partially or completely conceals defensive quills, and bicoloured bristle-quills (Voss &da Silva, 2001;Voss, 2015; Plate 1).Weexcluded the record ICN 3505 from our analyses because the specimen was transported from another locality in the western part of the Eastern Cordillera; the location on the label of the specimen is in a market area (Alberico & Moreno, 2006). We also considered the number of habitats occupied by
the species. For this, we overlaid the EOO on the ecoregions of Colombia, following the classification of terrestrial eco- regions (Olson et al., 2001).We evaluated body size based on information from the labels of the reviewed voucher speci- mens and from the literature (Voss, 2015; Ramírez-Chaves et al., 2016), and compared this trait with other species of Coendou.
Conservation status
To reassess the species conservation status, we used in- formation on the level of rarity, EOO and AOO (IUCN, 2012). We included the level of rarity and the ecoregions the species inhabits to infer the conservation status of the species because of the absence of information on other factors that can influence the AOO, such as biotic interac- tions (predation, competition) and landscape (connectivity and shelter) (Bernard et al., 2013).We also examined whether the EOOorAOOof C. vestitus overlaps with protected areas, by using the protected areas layer for Colombia (October 2018; SINAP, 2018), and evaluated the per cent of forest area that remained unchanged during 2016–2017 within the polygon of the species range (IDEAM, 2018). To evaluate
overlap of the AOO and EOO with protected areas, we esti- mated the extent (km2) of protected areas inside the EOO polygon using as a limit the elevational range of the species, and determined the number of confirmed localities inside protected areas.
Results
Rarity Our findings indicate that C. vestitus matches the criteria of an extremely rare species (Category H; Yu & Dobson, 2000), based on all four factors evaluated.
Population density From the description of C. vestitus to the present, we found only 12 voucher specimens and photo- graphs of three living specimens. Three records had no precise locality information. The records date from the species description in 1889 to photographic records from Cundinamarca in 2018 (Plate 1, Table 1). The scarcity of re- cords suggests a low population density, considering that several biological expeditions have visited the area in which the species occurs (Cundinamarca is the Depart- ment in which Bogotá, the capital of Colombia and home of the main Colombian academic institutions, is located).
Range It has been suggested that the elevational range of C. vestitus is 1,300–2,600 m (Barthelmess, 2016), 250–2,000 m (Alberico et al., 1999)and 600–1,440m(Ramírez-Chaves et al., 2016). However, based on the information from confirmed localities, and discarding a dubious record from Villavicencio, the elevational range appears to be from 1,250 m (Cundina- marca, Quipile) to 2,600 m (Cundinamarca, Chicaque). The estimated area of the species range is based on only six con- firmed localities (Table 1, Fig. 1), with an estimated EOO of 3,323 km2 and an AOO of 24 km2.
Number of habitat types in which the species occurs Overlaying the EOO on the terrestrial ecoregions map indi- cated that the species only occurs in tropical moist broadleaf forest (Olson et al., 2001). This ecoregion corresponds to the highly threatened sub-Andean and Andean forests.
Body size The adult body size of C. vestitus (total length of head and body 330–370 mm) is within the range observed for small Coendou species (C. insidiosus 310–350 mm; C. nycthemera 290–380 mm; C. pruinosus 320–380 mm; C. ru- fescens 340–410 mm; C. melanurus 330–435 mm; C. quichua 330–440 mm; C. speratus 330–440 mm; C. spinosus 285–470 mm; C. bicolor 450–500 mm; C. prehensilis 400–530 mm), being the third smallest species of the genus after C. ichillus (260–290 mm) and C. roosmalenorum (290 mm). Coendou vestitus has, however, a considerably shorter tail than the latter species.
Oryx, 2021, 55(5), 765–770 © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605319001029
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