Filogeografia de Cuniculus paca (Linnaeus, 1766): uma espécie com ampla distribuição no Brasil

Abstract

Cuniculus paca is the second largest rodent in Brazil, belonging to the Cuniculidae family and which has its distribution area in the Neotropics, from Uruguay and Argentina to Southern Mexico, widely distributed in Brazilian territory. In Brazil, two subspecies are known: C. paca paca with type locality for Pernambuco and C. paca mexianae with type locality for Ilha de Mexiana in Pará, but its limits and distribution area are still unknown. Cuniculus paca is widely used as subsistence resources by traditional communities, due to the costs and organoleptic similarity with chicken protein, with a hunting pressure of 0.4 individuals/km² and it is estimated that around 8% of all meat wild consumed is of the species. Some work has already been developed for the international Amazon, but none yet for the Brazilian Amazon, nor in other biomes in the country. These studies presented partial results due to a restricted and insufficient sample size. In this work, we used the mitochondrial Cytochrome Oxidase I (COI) gene as a molecular marker, sampling the largest possible area within the distribution of the species for the Brazilian territory with the largest possible number of samples, also incorporating sequences generated in other studies for the International Amazon. With the help of the DNA Barcoding protocol, 69 sequences were analyzed from 26 different locations throughout Brazilian territory. Population structuring analyzes and delimitations of intraspecific evolutionary lineages for the taxon were carried out. In total, three well-defined populations were found by the fastBAPS analysis, two in the Amazon and one in the Atlantic Forest, with genetic distances ranging from 1.92% to 4.52%. Within the Amazon this variation is observed as two large populations, one that occurs in the north of the Amazon and another that occurs along the Madeira River and Brazilian shield. Regarding evolutionary lineages, two were found for Brazilian territory, one from the Amazon and the other from the Atlantic forest, identified by four delimitation analyses: Locmin, PTP, bGMYC and ABGD (Automatic Barcode Gap Discovery). These lineages are not associated with the distribution of the subspecies suggested for Brazil, and therefore other samples from other regions should be incorporated in future work to better understand the diversity within C. paca.