| Marsh deer | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Male marsh deer | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Artiodactyla |
| Family: | Cervidae |
| Subfamily: | Capreolinae |
| Genus: | Blastocerus Wagner, 1844 |
| Species: | B. dichotomus |
| Binomial name | |
| Blastocerus dichotomus (Illiger, 1815) | |
 | |
| Geographic range: Red=Former; Yellow=Present | |
The marsh deer (Blastocerus dichotomus) is a species of deer native to South America. It is the largest living species of South American deer.
It is found in Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay. Formerly found in much of tropical and subtropical South America, it ranged east of the Andes, south from the Amazon rainforest, west of the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest and north of the Argentinian Pampa. Today it is largely reduced to isolated populations at marsh and lagoon zones in the Paraná, Paraguay, Araguaia and Guapore river basins. Small populations also occur in the southern Amazon, including Peru where protected in Bahuaja-Sonene National Park. [3] [4] [5] It is listed as a vulnerable species by the IUCN and is protected under CITES Appendix I. [1] This is the only species in the genus Blastocerus.
The latter half of its scientific name refers to the forked antlers.
Marsh deer resemble the North American mule deer or blacktail deer. They possess very large ears lined with white hairs, red-gold to tawny brown fur, blackish eyes and long dark legs. The hair turns darker during winter. There are also white marks on the hips and around the eyes. The legs are black below the tarsal as is the muzzle. The tail is of a paler reddish tone than the rest of the body on its upper part and black on the under part. The head-and-body length is 153 to 200 cm (5.02 to 6.56 ft), while the tail adds a further 12–16 cm (4.7–6.3 in). The height at the shoulder can range from 100 to 127 cm (3.28 to 4.17 ft). [6]
The hoof, which is large in relation to the body, has elastic interdigital membranes which are useful for swimming and walking on marshy surfaces. Only the males possess antlers which are ramified and reach a length of 60 centimetres (24 in). An adult typically grows to a weight of 80 to 125 kg (176 to 276 lb), although an occasional big male can weigh up to 150 kg (330 lb), [7] making it the largest species of living South American deer, [8] though it was exceeded in size by the extinct Antifer. [9]
They are solitary animals or living in groups with less than 6 individuals with only an adult male. Their main predators are the jaguar and the puma.
The marsh deer lives only in marsh areas, notably the Pantanal and Chaco, in which the level of water is less than 70 cm (28 in) deep. They are swift swimmers. The marshes with their high vegetation density protect them from predators and provide them with food. These deer also have a small migratory pattern, they follow the water levels between the dry season and flooding season. With the fluctuation in water levels, they are able to find new food sources that the water uncovers during the dry season. Some freshwater ponds on the Pantanal Wetland, Brazil reported low densities of individuals dictating that those ponds are not able to support large populations of marsh deer. [10]
Since marsh deer live near aquatic habitats, they eat a majority of their diet in aquatic plants. A study was conducted and they found 40 different species of plants in which they ate. The main food component was Graminae which took up 22% of their diet, Pontederiaceae took up 12%, Leguminosae was about 11%, and the rest was filled in with Nymphaeaceae, Alismataceae, Marantaceae, Onagraceae, and Cyperaceae. They also enjoy eating aquatic flowers and shrubs that grow in the swamps and the floating mats. [11] They can be best classed as a grazer-browser for food. Their diet also changes between the dry season and the flood season.
Usually the rutting season coincides with the dry season but can change from animal to animal. They may use this to their advantage for breeding or finding mates because the densities of marsh deer are significantly higher on the Rio Negro marshland boundary during the dry season compared to the less dense, more distributed population during the flooded season. [10] Gestation lasts approximately 271 days. [12] The offspring (normally one per female, though occasionally twins are born) are born between October and November. The infant deer are whitish which becomes more adult-like after a year.
The natural predators of the marsh deer – the jaguar (locally called onça or yaguaraté) (Panthera onca) and the puma (Puma concolor)— have almost completely disappeared from its habitat. The former major threat was poaching for its antlers, but this is somewhat under control. Destruction of its habitat presents nowadays the major threat to marsh deer. The Yacyretá Dam altered an area in which several hundred individuals lived and the draining of marshes for farmland and cattle farming threaten hundreds of hectares every year in Argentina and Brazil. Contagious diseases from cattle are also a problem, though it has been shown that the deer is not affected by brucellosis. In October 2018, Argentina established the Ciervo de los Pantanos National Park to help protect this species. [13]
The jaguar is a large cat species and the only living member of the genus Panthera native to the Americas. With a body length of up to 1.85 m and a weight of up to 158 kg (348 lb), it is the biggest cat species in the Americas and the third largest in the world. Its distinctively marked coat features pale yellow to tan colored fur covered by spots that transition to rosettes on the sides, although a melanistic black coat appears in some individuals. The jaguar's powerful bite allows it to pierce the carapaces of turtles and tortoises, and to employ an unusual killing method: it bites directly through the skull of mammalian prey between the ears to deliver a fatal blow to the brain.
The pudus are two species of South American deer from the genus Pudu, and are the world's smallest deer. The chevrotains are smaller, but they are not true deer. The name is a loanword from Mapudungun, the language of the indigenous Mapuche people of central Chile and south-western Argentina. The two species of pudus are the northern pudu from Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, and the southern pudu from southern Chile and south-western Argentina. Pudus range in size from 32 to 44 centimeters tall, and up to 85 centimeters (33 in) long. The southern pudu is classified as near threatened, while the northern pudu is classified as Data Deficient in the IUCN Red List.
The Pantanal is a natural region encompassing the world's largest tropical wetland area, and the world's largest flooded grasslands. It is located mostly within the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, but it extends into Mato Grosso and portions of Bolivia and Paraguay. It sprawls over an area estimated at between 140,000 and 195,000 km2. Various subregional ecosystems exist, each with distinct hydrological, geological, and ecological characteristics; up to 12 of them have been defined.
The chital or cheetal, also known as the spotted deer, chital deer and axis deer, is a deer species native to the Indian subcontinent. It was first described and given a binomial name by German naturalist Johann Christian Polycarp Erxleben in 1777. A moderate-sized deer, male chital reach 90 cm (35 in) and females 70 cm (28 in) at the shoulder. While males weigh 70–90 kg (150–200 lb), females weigh around 40–60 kg (88–132 lb). It is sexually dimorphic; males are larger than females, and antlers are present only on males. The upper parts are golden to rufous, completely covered in white spots. The abdomen, rump, throat, insides of legs, ears, and tail are all white. The antlers, three-pronged, are nearly 1 m long.
The Humid Chaco is tropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands ecoregion in South America. It lies in the basin of the Paraná River, covering portions of central Paraguay and northern Argentina, and with a small portion of southwestern Brazil and northwestern Uruguay. The natural vegetation is a mosaic of grasslands, palm savanna, and forest.
The Pampas deer is a species of deer that live in the grasslands of South America at low elevations. They are known as veado-campeiro in Portuguese and as venado or gama in Spanish. It is the only species in the genus Ozotoceros.
The Grande Sertão Veredas National Park is a national park located on the border between the states of Minas Gerais and Bahia, Brazil.
Noel Kempff Mercado National Park is a national park in northeast Santa Cruz Department, Province of José Miguel de Velasco, Bolivia, on the border with Brazil.
The taruca, also known as the Peruvian guemal, north Andean deer, north Andean huemul, northern huemul or northern guemal, is a mid sized deer species that inhabits the high regions of the Andes mountains in South America. The common name taruca means "deer" in both the Quechua and Aymara languages, though these are not interrelated. The taruca is closely related to the southern guemal, the only other member of the Hippocamelus genus.
The maguari stork is a large species of stork that inhabits seasonal wetlands over much of South America, and is very similar in appearance to the white stork; albeit slightly larger. It is the only species of its genus to occur in the New World and is one of the only three New World stork species, together with the wood stork and the jabiru.
The plumbeous ibis, also formerly called the blue ibis, is a large distinctive ibis species endemic to parts of central South America.
The purplish jay is a species of bird in the family Corvidae. It is found in northern Argentina, Bolivia, southern Brazil, Paraguay and southeastern Peru. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical dry forest, subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest, and heavily degraded former forest.
The Capreolinae, Odocoileinae, or the New World deer are a subfamily of deer. Alternatively, they are known as the telemetacarpal deer, due to their bone structure being different from the plesiometacarpal deer subfamily Cervinae. The telemetacarpal deer maintain their distal lateral metacarpals, while the plesiometacarpal deer maintain only their proximal lateral metacarpals. The Capreolinae are believed to have originated in the Middle Miocene, between 7.7 and 11.5 million years ago, in Central Asia.
The Pantanal Matogrossense National Park is a national park in the state of Mato Grosso at the border to Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil.
Guaporé Biological Reserve (Portuguese: Reserva Biológica do Guaporé is a biological reserve in the state of Rondônia, Brazil, on the border with Bolivia.
Taiamã Ecological Station is an ecological station in the Mato Grosso state of Brazil.
San Matías Integrated Management Natural Area is a protected area in Bolivia located in the Santa Cruz Department.
The Rio do Peixe is a river of São Paulo state in southeastern Brazil. It is a left tributary of the Paraná River.
Antifer is an extinct genus of large herbivorous deer belonging to the tribe Odocoileini native to South America during the Pleistocene, becoming extinct around 12,000 years ago. It was one of the largest South American deer genera, with an estimated body mass of up to 200 kilograms (440 lb), comparable to red deer, considerably exceeding the marsh deer, the largest living South American deer species in size. The genus has large antlers that could reach length of over 60 centimetres (24 in).
Media related to Blastocerus dichotomus at Wikimedia Commons
Data related to Blastocerus dichotomus at Wikispecies