Erethizontidae, Bonaparte, 1845

Voss, Robert S., Fleck, David W. & Jansa, Sharon A., 2019, Mammalian Diversity And Matses Ethnomammalogy In Amazonian Peru Part 5. Rodents, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2024 (466), pp. 1-180 : 112

Erethizontidae

The taxonomy of Neotropical porcupines has undergone substantial changes in recent years, the result of species-level revisionary work and subsequent phylogenetic analyses (Voss, 2011, 2015; Menezes et al., 2021). Two species are known from our region, and no others can plausibly be expected to occur there. 31 All Neotropical porcupines are arboreal, nocturnal, have weak eyeshine, and do not normally vocalize. Therefore, they are seldom observed, and only one of our two local species is vouchered by collected specimens.

31 Coendou bicolor has been reported (or listed as “expected”) in our region by several authors (e.g., Ríos et al., 1974; Valqui, 1999, 2001; Salovaara et al., 2003; Amanzo, 2006; Escobedo-Torres, 2015) based on misapplications of this name in field guides and other references (e.g., Emmons, 1997; Eisenberg and Redford, 1999). However, C. bicolor is apparently restricted to montane or premontane habitats in northern Peru; only in southern Peru is this species known to occur in the Amazonian lowlands (Voss, 2011, 2015). We assume that all unvouchered records of C. bicolor from the Yavarí-Ucayali interfluve are based on misidentifications of C. longicaudatus as recognized in this report.