Scott Schaefer's Fieldwork in Bolivia - SAS98

bolivia98
The 1998 American Museum of Natural History Bolivia expedition project combined a general ichthyological survey of the Sierra de Huanchaca meseta and surrounding lowland areas within the Noel Kempff Mercado National Park with a program of scientific and student exchange aimed at improving the knowledge base on freshwater fishes, as well as the local infrastructure for research and collections-based activities involving fishes at the Museo de Noell Kempff Mercado in Santa Cruz. The Noel Kempff Mercado National Park was established in 1988 to preserve a significant portion of a diverse set of ecologically unique habitats of eastern Santa Cruz State and the Museu de Historia Natural "Noel Kempff Mercado" (MNKM) of the Universidad Autónoma Gabriel René Moreno de Santa Cruz de la Sierra.


During August, 1998 we collected fishes from 19 stations along the Río Iténez, its two lowland tributaries draining the meseta, and on the meseta itself. The collections resulted in 353 lots and approximately 3,000 specimens of 167 species. We obtained 69 species not previously reported as present in the Park ichthyofauna, including 21 genera and two families (Engraulidae, Scoloplacidae). One half of all specimens were returned to MNKM; types of species eventually described from these collections will be deposited there as well. Smaller-sized taxa (characiforms, certain catfishes) were well represented in the lowlands, however, large numbers of expected taxa, principally large-sized species such as serrasalmines, anostomines, gymnotiforms and pimelodid catfishes, were not obtained. Five species had been previously reported from the meseta, two of which (Bryconops sp., Characidium sp.) were obtained in our collections; in addition, we obtained four species not previously reported from the meseta. Of the 9 meseta species, representatives of Acrobrycon, Bryconops and Pyrrhulina appear to be undescribed; these were not collected in the lowlands. Of the 246 total species previously listed as present in the Noel Kempff Mercado Park, 124 (50.4%) were not collected in this project. However, 74 of these 124 species (59.7%) were also not collected during the 1995 RAP survey and were instead listed as present on the basis of literature survey. The presence of these species in the Park remains to be verified on the basis of specimen collections. The huge discrepancy between the result of this project and previous work underscores the fragmentary baseline knowledge of the Park and upper Río Iténez ichthyofauna and suggests that much additional survey work is required. A complete report of the expedition and listing of the taxa collected is available in pdf.

SAS98 Localities and Specimens
SAS98 Photo Gallery