Ecology, Conservation and Management of Wild Pigs and Peccaries

Part II: Species Accounts

256

Taxonomy

The generic name of this species has been the subject of debate.

It has been referred to as both Tayassu tajacu and Dicotyles

tajacu (Jones  & Manning 1992; Grubb  & Groves 1993).

However, recent genetic research shows that collared pecca-

ries cluster in a separate lineage from the other modern species

(Gongora & Moran 2005). This, along with taxonomic compli-

cations arising from the use of the three proposed genus names,

makes Pecari tajacu the most appropriate and accepted name

(Gongora et al. 2006, 2011a; Ruvinsky et al. 2011; Taber et al.

2011). DNA (Gongora et al. 2006) and morphological (Groves &

Grubb 2011) data show the occurrence of two species within

the collared peccary, one in North/Central and one in South

America. In addition, it is probable that there is a third spe-

cies in Central America (see further details in Chapter 1 in this

book). However, due to the lack of enough knowledge to dif-

ferentiate the biology and ecology of each of the recently pro-

posed species, here we refer to a single species account (Pecari

tajacu) and various subspecies.

Subspecies and Distribution

Distribution

The collared peccary is the peccary species with the largest dis-

tribution range (Sowls 1997; Figure 24.1). It occurs in Arizona,

New Mexico, and Texas in the USA, a large part of Mexico, espe-

cially around the two cordilleras, most of Central America, the

entire Amazon basin, the Pacific coastal forest of Colombia,

Ecuador, and Peru, the llanos and lowland forest of Venezuela,

the Guianas, and Suriname, all of Brazil where populations are

increasingly fragmented in the south and east, and the Gran

Chaco of Paraguay, Bolivia, and northern Argentina where it

also occurs in the upper Parana and Paraguay river basins. In

Argentina, the species is extinct in the eastern and southern

portions of its original distribution. The Argentine popula-

tions of collared peccary in Misiones are isolated from the rest

of the country. Some of the larger islands near the mainland in

the Caribbean, such as Trinidad and Tobago, also have popula-

tions of P. tajacu. However, islands further from the mainland

Figure 24.1 Collared peccary distribution (source: IUCN 2016, Red List of Threatened Species). (A simplified black and white version of this figure will appear in some

formats. For the colour version, please refer to the plate section.)

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