South American biologists have described a “new” species of Pudu, the first living member of the deer family species described in the Americas for over 60 years.
The Northern Pudu (Pudu mephistophiles) is known as the world’s smallest deer, with adults measuring just over 30 centimeters at the shoulder and inhabits the Andes mountains in Peru, Ecuador and Colombia.
Guillermo D’Elia, a professor at the Universidad Austral de Chile (UACh), in Valdivia, Chile explains that in a 2024 paper (published in the international journal Journal of Mammalogy) he and his coauthors showed that the Northern Pudu was actually two distinct species by looking at both specific structural features and assessing genetic variation.
The researchers say they found that one kind of Northern Pudu is found in Ecuador, Colombia and Peru, north of Peru’s Huancabamba depression, with another kind , which the found just in Peru, south of the depression, which the researchers have now dubbed Pudella carlae.
D’Elia says that pudus serve a valuable niche in the ecosystem as both a food source for predators and spreading seed for plants.
“Pudus are herbivores, such as leaves, shoots, fruits and flowers; surely through these actions they disperse seeds, as well as shape the structure of the understory,” he says, “At the same time they are prey for top predators, so in this way their actions and presence regulates or is relevant in different ecological processes.”
From Uruguay To Chile
D’Elia was born and raised in the south american country of Uruguay and was always in contact with the natural world, the countryside, the sea, plants and animals.
“I always liked and was curious about that world, but I was also interested in geography and history,” he says, “In the last years of high school I had an excellent biology teacher who surely influenced my decision to study biology.”
D’Elia would go on to study an undergraduate biology degree at the University of the Republic (UdelaR), in Montevideo, then a PhD in Biology at the University of Michigan in the US, before going to work in Chile in 2005, while he is currently based.
“Knowledge has no borders,” he says, adding that the world has both obvious inequalities and others more subtle .
“The production of knowledge does not escape these global trends,” D’Elia says, “The best scientific infrastructure is in the global north, the most influential journals are also published there and most research trends come from there, not to mention the hegemony of English.”
Nonetheless, he explains that taxonomic and systematic studies of South American mammals have been carried out mainly by colleagues based in our subcontinent.
“This is not the reality in other parts of the Global South, such as Africa, where studies continue to be carried out predominantly by colleagues from the Global North, for example, from Europe,” D’Elia says.
Preserving Argentina’s Adorable ‘Living Fossil’
Elsewhere in South America, Micaela Camino, a researcher at the National Council of Research and Technology (CONICET) and director of Proyecto Quimilero, is focused on conserving the Chacoan peccary (Catagonus wagneri) and its habitat in the long term while contributing to improve the well-being of local communities.
The Chacoan Peccary was first discovered as a fossil and even though it was rediscovered in 1972, it is classified as Endangered by the IUCN.
“In previous research, I found that protected areas are insufficient, disconnected, and too small to conserve threatened and endemic species, such as the Chacoan peccary and that with the current rates and patterns of deforestation, the species will be extinct in the wild before 2051,” she says, adding that locals, including the indigenous Wichí and Criollo people, can coexist with the peccary if dog management and hunting are appropriate.
In a 2023 paper published in Global Environmental Change, Camino and her team created the first map of Indigenous Peoples Lands for the Dry Chaco, and found that where the indigenous inhabitants have recognized land rights, those areas acted as as deforestation barriers: at least 44% of the remaining forests are in these areas.
