The non-volant mammals of the Estacion Biologica Allpahuayo: Assessment of the natural history and community ecology of a proposed reserve

South American mammals have received increasing attention in recent years due to their high species diversity, functional complexity at the level of communities, and endangerment as a result of anthropogenic activities. These activities include deforestation and habitat alteration, the 2 major threats to biodiversity in the Neotropics. Indeed, many habitats are lost before basic inventories of plant and animal communities can be compiled. In addition, basic natural history information is lacking for many, if not most, neotropical species, especially in the Amazon Basin. Such basic information is essential for conservation to be successful.; To obtain such information, the small mammal community at the Estacíon Biológica Allpahuayo in northeastern Peru was monitored for 18 months. Data were collected to describe and quantify small mammal communities in pristine habitats and document the impacts of disturbance on these communities. These data represent 1 of the most comprehensive datasets on mammals ever collected from 1 site in the Amazon Basin.; A total of 32 species of marsupials and rodents were documented at the site, which represents 1 of the most species-rich communities reported from Amazonia. Estimates of local species richness indicate that the small mammal community was sampled approximately 90% completely, but that only 64% of species that occur in the region were documented. Communities in forested habitat were more rich and diverse than those present in secondary growth. Communities in older secondary growth were more diverse than those in more recently disturbed habitats. Community composition also changed significantly among different aged habitats, with unique species present in both disturbed and undisturbed habitats. Those present in disturbed areas tended to be habitat generalists whereas those in forest were habitat specialists. One encouraging result was that the mammal community in 15 year old disturbed habitat was equally diverse and similar in community composition to that present in mature forest. This suggests that small mammal communities can recover from disturbance events in a relatively short period of time, if the area is adjacent to mature forest. More studies such as this are needed to better understand how small mammal communities are assembled after anthropogenic disturbance.