Cryptonanus agricolai (Moojen, 1943)

Gutierrez, Eliecer E. & Marinho-Filho, Jader, 2017, The mammalian faunas endemic to the Cerrado and the Caatinga, ZooKeys 644, pp. 105-157 : 108

Cryptonanus agricolai (Moojen, 1943)

Distribution.

Cryptonanus agricolai is endemic to the Cerrado and the Caatinga, and has also been collected in contact zones between these biomes and the Amazon in northern Mato Grosso and southwestern Piauí states ( Bezerra et al. 2009). Records of Cryptonanus agricolai in the Atlantic forest were obtained from pellets of Tyto alba and might actually correspond to individuals captured in the Cerrado, the Caatinga, or both ( Souza et al. 2010), as these owls can potentially forage through long distances (up to ~31 km; Hegdal and Blaskiewicz 1984). According to Bezerra et al. (2014), unpublished molecular data suggest that Cryptonanus agricolai is absent from the Cerrado; however, we will refrain from adopting this view until these data become publicly available (contra Carmignotto et al. 2012). The current, known distribution of Cryptonanus agricolai includes the Brazilian states of Ceará, Goiás, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais, Pernambuco, Piauí, Sergipe, and Tocantins ( Voss et al. 2005, Bezerra et al. 2009, 2014, Carmignotto and Aires 2011, Bonvicino et al. 2012, Gómes et al. 2015, Gurgel-Filho et al. 2015, Hannibal and Neves-Godoi 2015, de la Sancha and D’Elía 2015). Alleged records from a locality in São Paulo state have been mentioned in the literature (see Martin et al. 2012), but they were made based on animals that were released (i.e., no voucher specimens are available) and identified using unreported criteria.

Conservation status.

The red list of the IUCN ver. 3.1 assigned the category "Data Deficient" to Cryptonanus agricolai (see Carmignotto et al. 2016a). The species was not included in the official list of threatened species of Brazil ( ICMBio-MMA 2016).