Campos Zilca, Magnusson William E
Laboratório de Vida Selvagem, Embrapa Pantanal, Corumbá, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil.
Coordenação de Biodiversidade, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil.
PLoS One. 2016 May 25;11(5):e0156406. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0156406. eCollection 2016.
Direct counts of crocodilians are rarely feasible and it is difficult to meet the assumptions of mark-recapture methods for most species in most habitats. Catch-out experiments are also usually not logistically or morally justifiable because it would be necessary to destroy the habitat in order to be confident that most individuals had been captured. We took advantage of the draining and filling of a large area of flooded forest during the building of the Santo Antônio dam on the Madeira River to obtain accurate estimates of the density and biomass of Paleosuchus palpebrosus. The density, 28.4 non-hatchling individuals per km2, is one of the highest reported for any crocodilian, except for species that are temporarily concentrated in small areas during dry-season drought. The biomass estimate of 63.15 kg*km-2 is higher than that for most or even all mammalian carnivores in tropical forest. P. palpebrosus may be one of the World´s most abundant crocodilians.
直接统计鳄鱼的数量通常不可行，而且在大多数栖息地，对于大多数鳄鱼物种而言，很难满足标记重捕法的假设条件。捕捉实验通常在后勤或道德上也不合理，因为为了确信大多数个体已被捕获，就必须破坏栖息地。我们利用在马德拉河上修建圣安东尼奥大坝期间大片洪水森林的排水和蓄水，来准确估计眼斑古鳄的密度和生物量。其密度为每平方公里28.4只非幼体个体，这是有报道的除了在旱季干旱期间暂时集中在小区域的物种之外，所有鳄鱼中密度最高的之一。63.15千克/平方公里的生物量估计值高于大多数甚至所有热带森林中的哺乳动物食肉动物。眼斑古鳄可能是世界上数量最多的鳄鱼之一。
