Coendou ichillus Voss and da Silva, 2001

Voss, Robert S., 2011, Revisionary Notes on Neotropical Porcupines (Rodentia: Erethizontidae) 3. An Annotated Checklist of the Species of Coendou Lacépède, 1799, American Museum Novitates 2011 (3720), pp. 1-1 : 1-

Coendou ichillus Voss and da Silva, 2001

Coendou ichillus Voss and da Silva, 2001: 17 ; type locality Río Pastaza, Provincia Pastaza, Ecuador. Sphiggurus ichillus: Woods and Kilpatrick, 2005: 1548 (name combination).

DISTRIBUTION: All known specimens and reliable sight records of Coendou ichillus are from the rainforested lowlands of eastern Ecuador and northeastern Peru (Voss and da Silva, 2001), but it would be reasonable to expect this species to occur throughout most of northwestern Amazonia (north of the Amazon and west of the Rio Negro).

REMARKS: This species may be closely related to Coendou pruinosus , C. roosmalenorum , and C. vestitus , all of which also have bristle-quills in addition to ordinary defensive quills and soft fur in their dorsal pelage. A detailed morphological description of C. ichillus and relevant comparisons with congeneric taxa were provided by Voss and da Silva (2001). A recently published photograph of the skin of an Ecuadorean porcupine in the Gothenburg Museum of Natural History ( Johansson and Högström, 2008) is captioned as “ Sphiggurus ichillus , ” but the specimen in question is unambiguously identifiable by its very short tail and reddish quills as Coendou rufescens (see below).

SPECIMENS EXAMINED: In addition to the material listed by Voss and da Silva (2001), I subsequently examined an uncataloged specimen of Coendou ichillus from Iquitos, Peru (with field number CLH 4709) in the Museum of Texas Tech University (Lubbock, TX).