PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Jay F. Storz
AU  - Marcial Quiroga-Carmona
AU  - Juan C. Opazo
AU  - Thomas Bowen
AU  - Matthew Farson
AU  - Scott J. Steppan
AU  - Guillermo D’Elía
TI  - Discovery of the world’s highest-dwelling mammal
AID  - 10.1101/2020.03.13.989822
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.03.13.989822
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/03/14/2020.03.13.989822.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/03/14/2020.03.13.989822.full
AB  - Environmental limits of animal life are invariably revised upwards when the animals themselves are investigated in their natural habitats. Here we report results of a scientific mountaineering expedition to survey the high-altitude rodent fauna of Volcán Llullaillaco in the Puna de Atacama of northern Chile, an effort motivated by video documentation of mice (genus Phyllotis) at a record altitude of 6205 m. Among numerous trapping records at altitudes >5000 m, we captured a specimen of the yellow-rumped leaf-eared mouse (Phyllotis xanthopygus rupestris) on the very summit of Llullaillaco at 6739 m. This summit specimen represents an altitudinal world record for mammals, far surpassing all specimen-based records from the Himalayas and elsewhere in the Andes. This discovery suggests that we may have generally underestimated the altitudinal range limits and physiological tolerances of small mammals simply because the world’s highest summits remain relatively unexplored by biologists.