Coendou quichua Thomas, 1899

VOSS, ROBERT S., 2003, A New Species of Thomasomys (Rodentia: Muridae) from Eastern Ecuador, with Remarks on Mammalian Diversity and Biogeography in the Cordillera Oriental, American Museum Novitates 3421, pp. 1-48 : 34-35

Coendou quichua Thomas

SPECIMENS COLLECTED: None.

OTHER MATERIAL: I examined three NHRS specimens (A58/2822, A58/2962, A59/2962) collected by Ludovic Söderström in 1911 at ‘‘Tablon above Tumbaco’’ with recorded elevations of 9000– 11,000 ft [2744–3354 m].

TAXONOMY: Coendou quichua is a morphologically distinctive porcupine whose diagnostic characters were accurately described by Thomas (1899). Cabrera (1961), however, treated quichua as a subspecies of C. bicolor Tschudi without providing any justification for doing so. Although Emmons (1990), Albuja (1991), Tirira (1999), and Alberico et al. (1999) have subsequently recognized that quichua is a valid species, some checklists (e.g., Woods, 1993) continue to treat this name as a synonym of bicolor .

To date, no rationale has been provided for the zoogeographically incoherent and morphologically divergent collection of taxa that Cabrera (1961) lumped together as Coendou bicolor . Although this name has been applied by authors to a wide range of morphologies, specimens collected in the vicinity of the Peruvian type locality (e.g., AMNH 147500, FMNH 65799) are distinctively large porcupines (ca. 900 mm total length) with tails that are almost as long as the combined length of head­and­body; the visible dorsal pelage consists entirely of bicolored (blacktipped) quills, of which those over the forequarters are conspicuously longer than those over the lower back and rump. By contrast, C. quichua is much smaller (ca. 600 mm or less) with a proportionately much shorter tail (approximately half the length of head­andbody) and tricolored (pale­tipped) dorsal quills that are not conspicuously longer over the forequarters than on the lower back and rump. Cranially, quichua has a proportionately narrower rostrum than bicolor , smaller orbits, less expanded jugals, and less inflated frontal sinuses. Other relevant morphological comparisons will be provided in an upcoming generic revision (Voss, in prep.), but the characters given here together with other traits mentioned by Emmons (1990) and Alberico et al. (1999) are sufficient for unambiguous identifications of these dissimilar taxa.

REMARKS: The original specimen tag of NHRS A58/2822 notes that the animal was ‘‘found in the underbrush’’. Lönnberg (1913) originally reported this material as having been collected above Tumbaco, without mentioning the actual collecting site (Tablón).

Cuniculus (Stictomys) taczanowskii (Stolzmann)

SPECIMENS COLLECTED: None.

OTHER MATERIAL: A single specimen that I have not examined (QCAZ 954) was collected in the páramo near Paso de Guamaní by G. Onore in 1993 (D. Tirira, personal commun.).

TAXONOMY: The mountain paca is morphologically distinctive ( Thomas, 1924) and was formerly distinguished generically (as Stictomys) from the lowland paca ( Cuniculus paca ). Although only a single species of mountain paca is currently recognized, no critical analysis of morphological or molecular data is currently available to test the hypothesis that C. taczanowskii (from Ecuador and Peru) is actually conspecific with populations from Venezuela and Colombia that were formerly known as C. sierrae (e.g., by Thomas, 1905; Krumbiegel, 1940). The International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN, 1998) recently ruled that Cuniculus Brisson, 1762 , is the oldest available name for pacas, previously referred by most American authors to Agouti Lacépède, 1799 .