Camera trapping arboreal mammals in Argentina's Atlantic Forest

Abstract

Canopy camera trapping is being increasingly used to characterize assemblages of arboreal mammals. In this study we compared, for the first time, the assemblage of arboreal mammals of the Atlantic Forest, surveyed using canopy camera trapping at two protected areas of Misiones, Argentina: Piñalito (11 camera-trap stations) and Cruce Caballero (9 stations), with the assemblage recorded at ground-level with a camera-trapping survey conducted at another protected area, the nearby private reserve Valle del Alegría (18 stations). We calculated the number of independent photo-events for each species and site, and we built species rank abundance curves to compare the recorded species diversity among sites. We recorded six mammal species at Piñalito and Cruce Caballero, and 23 at Valle del Alegría. Canopy-survey sites showed lower diversity but a different and non-nested species composition when compared to the ground-level survey. One of the most frequently recorded species in the canopy, the brown-eared woolly opossum, Caluromys lanatus, categorized as Vulnerable in Argentina, has not been photographed in ground-level camera-trap surveys in Misiones before. Our results suggest that canopy camera trapping represents a robust method to sample arboreal species that are missed in ground-level camera-trap surveys, thus improving forest species inventories.