Small Mammal Response to Forest Succession 24 October 2013
An arboreal mouse of the genus Peromyscus...
Year thirteen of a small mammal community study with my Ecology students continues to go very well. We are looking very carefully at habitat use by a variety of small mammals in Polk County, Wisconsin. Safety protocol is very strict, and the mammals are measured, marked with permanent green dye (on the belly) and released. Short-tailed shrews remain a habitat generalist after all of these years. Meadow voles are only found in the brushy grasslands and beneath the low pine bows of our oldfield /early forest succession area. Red-backed voles remain a rodent of the tamarack and sphagnum bogs. But the mice of genus Peromyscus, formerly a rodent of the upland forest and bog lowland forest tracts of our school forest, are finally colonizing the oldfield/early forest succession area! The secret to this colonization is quite likely the size of the white pines, as many are now reaching 14 to 17 years of age. With their size they are providing plenty of arboreal structure and, recently, dead snags! We continue to see a variety of tail patterns in our Peromyscus, implying that they are hybrids, and while we could clearly call the population white-footed mice by their size, most have the tail pattern of the deer mouse. This population is very different in body size and body build than those of the Saint Croix River Valley in the same county! Surely, this species complex is still poorly understood!
The picture was taken with the spectacular Carl Zeiss optics of the Nokia Lumia 928 smart phone! We do live in amazing times!
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