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Project Ucamara is an international collaboration involving principal scientists from Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Spain, USA, UK, and Venezuela. Together we conducted an inventory of fishes, crustaceans, mollusks, annelids, turbellarian flatworms, and sponges in the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve in the Peruvian Amazon. This reserve is the largest contiguous area of protected várzea whitewater floodplain in the Neotropics (21,500 sq km), and Peru 's largest conservation area. Some 100,000 ribereños (river people) live in or around the reserve, and rely on its rich resources for their livelihoods. The Pacaya Samiria Reserve is administered by the Peruvian National Institute for Natural Resources (INRENA). Conservation activities in the Park, such as the training of guards and the development of management plans are coordinated by the Peruvian NGO Pro-Naturaleza.
The floodplains of the Pacaya Samiria Reserve are a mosaic of lakes, channels and seasonally inundated forests that host an extraordinarily rich flora and fauna. As is the case with várzeas throughout South America , the aquatic fauna of the Pacaya Samiria Reserve is poorly known. This project was initiated by invitations from INRENA and was conducted in collaboration with students and staff of the Universidade Nacional de la Amazonia Peruana (UNAP) in Iquitos, and the Universidad Museo de Historia Natural de la Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, in Lima.
This project was funded by the National Science Foundation program in Biotic Surveys and Inventories
(DEB-0102593) .
This program supports basic research and collecting activities that are designed to discover and document the biological species diversity of all forms of life on Earth. Project Ucamara also received funding as a sub-award from the NSF funded All Catfish Species Inventory (ACSI).
We conducted intensive surveys mostly within a focal area of approximately 30 km radius centered on INRENA field station PV2, in the middle Rio Pacaya (yellow circle). LANDSAT images were used to select this area, which represents all the major hydrological and vegetational features of the Pacaya Samiria floodplain. Streams in non flooded terra-firme forests within the enconomic buffer-zone to the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve, were also sampled near the village of Jenaro Herrera (red circle).
This website was created by Will Crampton. For further information about Project Ucamara please contact
Will Crampton.
Web Programming by Justin Wortley.
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