In 2018 she co-launched Better Without Mercury / Mejor Sin Mercurio, a mercury cleanup and site restoration project at the Gualconda gold mine in Colombia with the mine manager, Rolberto Alvarez. Miller Sustainable Jewelry Consulting and provides strategy, guidance, and impact measurement services to clients including jewelry brands and not-for-profits.Īs co-founder and former director of Ethical Metalsmiths, Miller worked to create a community of individuals committed to responsible materials sourcing by raising awareness of problems needing attention and working to address them. Miller is the founder and lead consultant of Christina T. First trained as an artist, she brings creative problem solving to her work on gold supply chains, jewelry, and community organizing for Amazon Aid Foundation. While agoutis depend on Amazonian forests to provide shelter and food, the forests depend on agoutis to help spread seed and propagate new trees.Ĭhristina T Miller is a sustainable jewelry specialist who encourages leadership in positive social change and environmental protection. Recent research suggests that scatter-hoarding rodents such as agoutis may substitute for seed-dispersing megafauna that reigned the landscape ~10,000 years ago, allowing for many tree species to continue to flourish in the Amazon. When larger herbivores, like the giant ground sloth, once roamed the Amazon basin thousands of years ago, they consumed and passed seeds, facilitating seed dispersal for several tree species. In this relationship, Brazil nut tree seeds are effectively removed from the pod and distributed throughout the agouti’s habitat, and perhaps ultimately providing nourishment to an agouti if eaten, or sprouting and eventually growing into a mature tree. This scatter-hoarding behavior has led to a mutualism, or mutually beneficial relationship, between agoutis and Brazil nut trees. Agoutis are the only animals known with strong enough to teeth to break open the tough Brazil nut pod, and therefore are important in the seed dispersal process for the Brazil nut tree, a commercially valuable species. Ecological ImportanceĪgoutis engage in scatter-hoard behavior, in which they cache seeds beneath the soil, dig them up and rebury them again and again. This is because they need large areas to court and breed, and therefore do not thrive in captivity. While agoutis are capable of adapting to disturbed or non-forested area so long as sufficient cover is provided, they still depend on connected habitat patches. ThreatsĪccording to the IUCN red list, the Amazonian agouti species are of least conservation concern, while others are vulnerable to extinction or data deficient, meaning scientists are unable to evaluate their conservation status until further research is conducted. And they are fast and agile, capable of jumping several feet high and spinning while in mid-air to evade their many predators. Agoutis are quite territorial and mark their area with urine or other sources of pheromones. When neither fruits nor nuts are available, they will eat alternate food sources such as fungi, insects and plants. While fruit is their preferred food, agoutis are equipped with sharp incisors to crack the hard shell of nuts. They make their dens in burrows between boulders, roots and bushes or in tree hollows, often near swamps or other aquatic environments. Agoutis seek out habitat with dense cover because it offers protection from feline predators like coatimundis, jaguars and ocelots. They will also live in gardens or farmland so long as adequate ground cover is present. HabitatĪgoutis mostly inhabit lowland and montane tropical forests, but some live in drier environments like savanna or scrub lands. A few species, however, are more widely distributed in the Amazon rainforest, and those include the Black-rumped, Red-rumped and Black Agoutis. Most species exist in small habitat ranges in the tropical Americas – some are even restricted to single islands. Their fur comes in many shades of orange, brown and black, with individual hairs having alternating black and buff bands creating an agouti pattern. These small mammals may grow up to 2.5 feet long and weigh up to 13 pounds. Agoutis are rodents in the genus Dasyprocta, which consists of 12 known species found throughout Central and South America.
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