Journal of Threatened Taxa |
www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 January 2021 | 13(1): 17561–17563
ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893
(Print)
https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.5950.13.1.17561-17563
#5950 | Received 04 April 2020 | Final
received 15 June 2020 | Finally accepted 25 December 2020
First report of the Asiatic
Brush-tailed Porcupine Atherurus macrourus (Linnaeus, 1758) (Mammalia: Rodentia: Hystricidae) from West Bengal, India
Suraj Kumar Dash 1, Abhisek Chettri 2, Dipanjan
Naha 3 & Sambandam Sathyakumar
4
1–4 Department of Endangered Species
Management, Wildlife Institute of India, P.O. Box 18, Chandrabani,
Dehradun, Uttarakhand 248001, India.
1 surajkumardash5584@gmail.com, 2
abichettri23@gmail.com, 3 dip.sundarbans@gmail.com, 4 ssk@wii.gov.in
(corresponding author)
Editor: Anwaruddin Choudhury, The Rhino Foundation
for Nature in North East India, Guwahati, India. Date of publication: 26 January
2021 (online & print)
Citation: Dash, S.K., A. Chettri, D. Naha
& S. Sathyakumar (2021). First report of the
Asiatic Brush-tailed Porcupine Atherurus macrourus (Linnaeus, 1758) (Mammalia: Rodentia: Hystricidae) from West Bengal---, India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 13(1): 17561–17563. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.5950.13.1.17561-17563
Copyright: © Dash et al. 2021. Creative Commons Attribution
4.0 International License. JoTT allows unrestricted use, reproduction, and
distribution of this article in any medium by providing adequate credit to the
author(s) and the source of publication.
Funding: This study was
funded by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate
Change, Government of India under
the National Mission for Himalayan Studies (NMHS). Grant number:
NMHS/LG/2016/009.
Competing interests: The authors
declare no competing interests.
Acknowledgements: We thank: the Principal Chief
Conservator Of Forests and Chief Wildlife Warden of West Bengal for granting
permission for research in northern Bengal; the Director, Wildlife Institute of
India for facilitation of the study; the DFO, Assistant Wildlife Warden, and
Range Officers of Darjeeling Wildlife Division for their logistic support
during fieldwork. We also thank the
reviewers and editor for their contribution to improve this article.
The Asiatic Brush-tailed
Porcupine Atherurus macrourus
is considered to be one of the lesser-known rodent species of southern Asia
distributed throughout the northeastern part from central China to Malaysia
including countries such as India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam,
Thailand, and Cambodia (Molur 2016; Dhendup & Dorji 2017). Although it has such a wide distribution
range it is still considered a rare species (Choudhury 2006; Talukdar et al.
2019). It occurs in the subtropical and
tropical montane forests at 100–4,571 m (Eisenberg et al. 2015; Talukdar et al.
2019). It is listed as Least Concern by
the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (Molur 2016)
and in India it is protected under Schedule II of the Wildlife (Protection)
Act, 1972.
Here we report this species for
the first time from the state of West Bengal.
Prior to this, the species has been reported only from the northeastern
states of India: Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram,
Nagaland, and Tripura (Agrawal 2000; Gupta 2000; Choudhury 2006; Datta et al. 2008; Srinivasulu
& Srinivasulu 2012; Choudhury 2013; Choudhury
2016; Talukdar & Choudhury 2017; Talukdar et al. 2019). The present record can be considered the
western-most distribution range of the Asiatic Brush-tailed Porcupine as the
earlier report mentions the Gedu region of Bhutan as
the western-most distribution limit (Dhendup & Dorji 2017) which is ca. 125km away in the east.
As part of our research
investigation on the human-leopard interactions in northern Bengal, we deployed
camera traps to monitor the Leopard population in Mahananda Wildlife Sanctuary
in November 2018–February 2019. On 28
January 2019, at 21.09h a single individual of Asiatic Brush-tailed Porcupine
was photo captured in a camera trap deployed in upper Ghoramara
Block (26.887N & 88.417E, 640m) of the Latpanchor
Beat, North Range, Mahananda Wildlife Sanctuary (Image 1A,B). The photo capture site was characterized by
dense vegetation of plant species such as Baccaurea
sapida, Bauhinia vahlii,
Betula cylindrostachya, Castanopsis
tribuloides, Cinnamomum
obtusifolium, Duabanga
grandiflora, Evodia fraxinifolia,
Ostodes paniculata,
Saurauia nepalensis,
Schima wallichii,
Semecarpus anacardium,
Terminalia myriocarpa, and Terminalia crenulata. The
present observation on the habitat and nocturnal activity are similar to
earlier reports (Agrawal 2000; Choudhury, 2006; Talukdar et al. 2019).
For figure
& image - - click here
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