Chaetophractus villosus, hairy armadillo or peludo

POLJAK SEBASTIÁN; GABRIELLI MAGALI; SANCHEZ JULIETA; LIZARRALDE MARTA SUSANA

Invasive Exotic Mammals in Argentina

SAREM

Año: 2023; p. 265 - 271

The delicate balance of the ecosystem of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago can be easily disturbed by the habitat destruction (including exploitation of natural resources) and species introduction due to its insular condition. Actually, 66% of its mammal species are exotic introduced for different reasons, from rats and mice that arrived as stowaways on ships since the 18th century to the recently incorporated C. villosus (Poljak et al. 2007 and references therein). This armadillo species was introduced at the south of San Sebastian Bay in 1982, area of intense hydrocarbon exploitation activity (see map). Eight individuals from Buenos Aires province were introduced for aesthetic reasons in a private ranch located at the northwest of the Rio Grande city and an unknown number of animals were introduced by an oil drilling team from Santa Cruz province for consumption as food. Although some of these individuals were released in the area of exploitation of hydrocarbons. Subsequent phylogeographic study supported the hypothesis of these possible origins since revealed the genetic relationship between the population of Tierra del Fuego with individuals from Pampean Region (Buenos Aires and La Pampa provinces) and Santa Cruz province (Poljak et al. 2010). According to this study, all the argentinean Patagonia was colonized by a single mitochondrial lineage whose northernmost representative was captured in a locality of Buenos Aires. All the individuals from the population of the Isla Grande Island analyzed belongs to the same lineage.