The mountain paca (''Cuniculus taczanowskii'') is a small burrow-dwelling

rodent Rodents (from Latin , 'to gnaw') are mammals of the Order (biology), order Rodentia ( ), which are characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and Mandible, lower jaws. About 40% of all mammal specie ...

whose habitats are high altitude

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

n forests.

Paca A paca ia a rodent in South and Central America. Paca or PACA may also refer to: People * William Paca (1740–1799), a Founding Father of the United States * Paca Blanco (Francisca Blanco Díaz, born 1949), Spanish activist * Paca Navas (Franc ...

s are nocturnal, sedentary, and solitary animals with territorial tendencies. It eats mostly fruits and seeds. The mountain paca primarily inhabits higher

Andean The Andes ( ), Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range (; ) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is long and wide (widest between 18°S ...

montane forest Montane ecosystems are found on the slopes of mountains. The alpine climate in these regions strongly affects the ecosystem because temperatures lapse rate, fall as elevation increases, causing the ecosystem to stratify. This stratification is ...

regions in

Venezuela Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...

Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...

Ecuador Ecuador, officially the Republic of Ecuador, is a country in northwestern South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and the Pacific Ocean on the west. It also includes the Galápagos Province which contain ...

Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...

and

Bolivia Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...

. This paca has coarse fur without underfur, dark brown to black on the upper body and white or yellowish on the underbelly. It usually has three to five rows of white spots along its sides, against a dark grey background. It has thick strong legs, with four digits in the forefeet and five in the hind feet (the first and fifth are reduced); the nails function as hooves. The tail is short and hairless. The

zygomatic arch In anatomy, the zygomatic arch (colloquially known as the cheek bone), is a part of the skull formed by the zygomatic process of temporal bone, zygomatic process of the temporal bone (a bone extending forward from the side of the skull, over the ...

is expanded laterally and dorsally and is used as a resonating chamber - a unique feature among mammals. The mountain paca is hunted for its meat, which is high in calories and is considered a delicacy particularly in rural communities. Due to its quick growth, it may be bred in

captivity Captivity, or being held captive, is a state wherein humans or other animals are confined to a particular space and prevented from leaving or moving freely. An example in humans is imprisonment. Prisoners of war are usually held in captivity by a ...

for commercial use. However, it has a low reproductive capacity and its numbers have been significantly reduced in recent years due to hunting and

habitat destruction Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss or habitat reduction) occurs when a natural habitat is no longer able to support its native species. The organisms once living there have either moved elsewhere, or are dead, leading to a decrease ...

. It is fairly abundant in protected areas.

''Cuniculus hernandezi''

''Cuniculus hernandezi'' Castro, López & Becerra, 2010 is a

name A name is a term used for identification by an external observer. They can identify a class or category of things, or a single thing, either uniquely, or within a given context. The entity identified by a name is called its referent. A person ...

coined for a proposed species of

paca A paca ia a rodent in South and Central America. Paca or PACA may also refer to: People * William Paca (1740–1799), a Founding Father of the United States * Paca Blanco (Francisca Blanco Díaz, born 1949), Spanish activist * Paca Navas (Franc ...

described as an

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

to the Central Andes in

, the only place it has been identified as such to date. Individuals may weigh over , making ''C. hernandezi'' a rather large

. The authors omitted a description of the animal, but it is thought to be very similar to the mountain paca, ''C. taczanowskii'', from which this taxon was split. According to the authors, analysis of its

mitochondrial DNA Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA and mDNA) is the DNA located in the mitochondrion, mitochondria organelles in a eukaryotic cell that converts chemical energy from food into adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondrial DNA is a small portion of the D ...

and karyotypy indicated that it may be a distinct species. The

specific epithet In Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin gramm ...

honours Colombian biologist Dr. Jorge Hernández Camacho. Héctor Ramírez-Chaves and Sergio Solari, in 2014, argued that the species is not an available name (''

nomen nudum In Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy, a ''nomen nudum'' ('naked name'; plural ''nomina nuda'') is a designation which looks exactly like a scientific name of an organism, and may have originally been intended to be one, but it has not been published ...

'') according to the rules of the current

International Code of Zoological Nomenclature The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) is a widely accepted Convention (norm), convention in zoology that rules the formal scientific name, scientific naming of organisms treated as animals. It is also informally known as the I ...

(ICZN), due to imprecise definition of the taxon and lack of a

type specimen In biology, a type is a particular wikt:en:specimen, specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally associated. In other words, a type is an example that serves to ancho ...

. Not only is the taxonomy blundered; the original research also used a faulty methodology with limited data to obtain their genetic tree, omitted to publish important results validating (or not) their conclusions, neglected a study of the availability of previously proposed names for pacas found in the region (old synonyms; i.e. ''C. serriae'' in Colombia and Venezuela), and presented no evidence with which to identify the taxon (even the illustrations lack identifications). Although the authors claim that the taxon is easily differentiated by the size of the interparietal bone, they then mention that morphological measurements cannot distinguish the taxon, nor do they provide any evidence to back these assertions. Furthermore, no evidence was presented restricting the taxon to the central Cordilleras.

References

Bibliography

External links

Photo of mountain paca
{{Taxonbar, from=Q1034944, from2=Q18387902 Hystricognath rodents Mammals of the Andes Mammals of Bolivia Mammals of Colombia Mammals of Ecuador Mammals of Peru Mammals of Venezuela Mammals described in 1865 Taxa named by Jan Sztolcman Cuniculus (genus)