Spatial Ecology Group: DOSEL

The austral temperate forest from Southern Chile is the privileged habitat of one of the world's rarest mammal: the "monito del monte" (Dromiciops gliroides). This small, arboreal species is probably the world's most primitive marsupial, and the single representative of an order (the Microbiotheria) that shws the most restricted geographical distribution among all Mammals. Dromiciops gliroides inhabits the relict forests of austral Chile - a habitat characterized by an exceptional ecological and evolutive history, which survived tectonic processes and large climatic changes, maintaining an ancestral botanical and ecological legacy with numerous plant and animal endemisms.

Next to its exceptional biota, austral temperate forests show exceptional ecological relationships, such as the extreme reliance of its flora on a small amount of vertebrates for its pollination and seed dispersal. It is therefore most troubling to note that these ecosystems are serously threatened by rampant deforestation, the isolation and degradation of the remaining forest patches, and the introduction of exotic species.

The fate of “monito del monte” is so closely intervowen with the future of the austral temprate forest and its trees and epiphytes, that it is no exageration to rank it as a conservation problem of major international importance.

The DOSEL project focuses on evaluating the conservation status of the temperate-austral forest populations of “monito del monte”; its inter-dependence with the fleshy-fruit epiphytes; and the threats posed by fragmentation and degradation.

Our study system was chosen to represent broader develipment and conservation problems. The temperate forests of Chiloe Island are good model system to reflect on the consequences of contrasting rural-development strategies for Chile’s Souther region. Similar to other species such as the Darwin fox or the Southern Pudu, “monito del monte” may represent a flagship species that could drive and indicate the conservation of its most fragile biodiversity. Our research works aims at facilitating the development and implementation of sustainable-management strategies, necessary to guarantee the long-term survivorship of “monito del monte” in Chiloe’s dwindling forests. We will contribute to this purpose by providing empirical knowledge on the impact of forest fragmentation and management on the conservation of the “monito del monte” and the arboreal epiphytes that rely on it for dispersing within and among forest fragments. These data will be integrated in meta-population models, which will be use to simulate the effect of different management scenarios – therefore informing local and regional policies and management decissions.

Research team

The DOSEL project is a join undertaking of the IMEDEA (Mallorca, Spain), the EEZA (Almeria, Spain), the Universidad Católica de Chile (Santiago, Chile) and the Universidad Austral (Valdivia, Chile).