Simultaneously one of the cutest and most pain-inducing creatures, porcupines capture attention all over their worldwide range. In this paper, Héctor Ramirez-Chaves and his coauthors describe a new species of porcupine from the Andes of Colombia. The work has taken them across different ecosystems and to a good handful of international museums. As Héctor describes Colombia’s incredible biodiversity, he also addresses the critical nature of his work. “We still need to study rodents here in Colombia,” he says. “There are plenty of new species groups that have not been studied at all because they are not very charismatic, so they are neglected. People don't study them and they are very important to the ecosystem. So we need more attention in these small mammals.”
If you don’t want to fall in love with porcupines, don’t listen to this episode! Héctor’s joy is infectious and the curious nature of these cryptic rodents is irresistible.
Héctor Ramirez-Chaves’ paper “A review of the Quichua Porcupine Coendou quichua complex (Rodentia: Erethizontidae) with the description of a new species from Colombia” is in volume 106 issue 3 of the Journal of Mammalogy
It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1093/jmammal/gyae140
A transcript of this episode can be found here: Héctor Ramirez-Chaves - Transcript
A transcript of this episode in spanish can be found here: Héctor Ramirez-Chaves - Spanish Transcript
New Species: Coendou vossi
Episode image credit: Omar Daniel Leon Alvarado
Check out Héctor’s lab on instagram: @izbd_lab
And take a look at their linktree for recent research: https://linktr.ee/izbd_lab
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