What Animal In Alabama Could Be Dark Gray And Live In A Burrow Which It Digs

The southeastern pocket gopher (Geomys pinetis) is a species of burrowing rodent from Club Rodentia that is native to Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. They belong to the Geomyidae Family, which includes 35 species in North and Fundamental America known for their tunneling activities. The name pocket gopher comes from their fur-lined cheek pouches or pockets that they use to store and transport food to their underground burrows. Their genus name comes from the Greek word geo, meaning "earth," and mys, meaning "mouse." The species proper name, pinetis, is derived from the Latin word pinetum, meaning "from a pino woods." Pocket gophers are also sometimes known as "sandy mounders" for the sandy mounds of excavated earth that they go out at the mouths of their burrows. Locals in the Southeast have been known to morph the term "sandy mounders" into the discussion "salamander," confusingly referring to this mammal with the common name shared by an order of amphibians.

Southeastern pocket gophers are fossorial animals, meaning that they spend near of their lives clandestine. They have a compact thick body with small optics and ears and a brusk tail. They are equipped with muscular, clawed forelimbs that they use to dig their burrows. The southeastern pocket gopher is considered a medium sized rodent. The pocket gopher ranges between 7.9 to 11.viii inches (~20 to xxx centimeters) in length and counterbalance about three.5 to 10.5 ounces (~100 to 300 grams) with males being around 10 per centum heavier than females. The species has cinnamon chocolate-brown fur with a ruby orangish tinge along the flanks and shoulders. The breast and tum surfaces are low-cal gray to brown with white along the forearms, throat, and feet.

Pocket gopher dens can exist hands identified by the cone-shaped piles of loose sand that have been pushed to the surface at the entrances. Their subterranean tunnels are anywhere between 5.nine inches to 6.5 feet (~15 centimeters to 2 meters) beneath the surface, featuring 6 to 12 entrances, and mounds, associated with each tunnel system. There are five phases to building a mound: prospecting, groundbreaking, excavation, mound edifice, and plugging of the archway. The species is known to build more mounds during periods of low temperatures, a practice thought to be a response to increased efforts to find food. Female burrows tend to be more compact and localized, whereas male burrows are more linear and spreading.

The spreading form of the male'due south tunnels is believed to increment his chances of detecting the odor of a female in her burrow arrangement for mating. After mating occurs, pocket gophers seal off their burrows and exercise not interact farther. The pocket gopher breeds throughout the year but tiptop flavor is betwixt January and August. Young are born betwixt March and August. Females unremarkably requite birth to one to iii pups per litter, with an average of one to two litters per year. The pups are weaned inside a month later on birth and achieve maturity at vi months of age.

Southeastern pocket gophers have alternating periods of activity throughout the twenty-four hours and night, with most of the mounding activity taking place at dusk and dawn. They are commonly alone and can be highly territorial, only meeting in order to breed. The typical lifespan of a southeastern pocket gopher is between two and 5 years, with depredation and habitat loss existence the almost common causes of death in this species. Pocket gophers face several threats from predators that are able to follow them into their burrows, such equally weasels and snakes, most notably the pine ophidian whose range overlaps the southeastern pocket gopher. Other predators include coyotes that can dig them up from cloak-and-dagger and birds of prey, such every bit owls and hawks, which catch them if they ever leave the burrows.

These gophers are strictly herbivorous. Their diet consists of roots, tubers, rhizomes, and some above-ground plants. In add-on to longleaf pine ecosystems, southeastern pocket gophers can be establish around agricultural fields and are historically known as a pest, being especially attracted to sweet potato, peanut, and sugarcane crops. Food caches are usually stored within chambers forth their tunnel system. They take specialized teeth adjusted for their diets, with ever growing, big incisors used for gnawing and chewing. They have the power to close their lips behind their incisors to preclude dirt from entering into the oral fissure when using their teeth.

The pocket gopher inhabits the dry, sandy areas of the coastal manifestly region of Alabama, southern Georgia, and central Florida and plays a vital role in the health of that ecosystem. This area is total of longleaf pines, turkey oaks, and live oaks, and their mound building and tunneling helps to aerate and wheel nutrients in the soil to increase multifariousness and vegetation growth. Several species of amphibians and reptiles utilise pocket gopher burrows as shelter along with arthropods, of which fourteen species have merely been discovered from these types of habitats. Much of the southeastern pocket gopher's environmental, however, remains yet poorly understood due to its fossorial lifestyle and express distribution.

Within Alabama, the pocket gopher has historically been recorded in xvi counties, all of which are located within the upper and lower littoral plain east of Mobile Bay and the Tombigbee and Black Warrior River Systems. Today, the southeastern pocket gopher is constitute in abundant numbers in suitable habitat but is absent in a big portion of its historical range in Alabama and other states. Habitat loss is the main driver of the significant subtract in numbers, and its low reproduction rates reduce its capacity to recover. The Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources has listed the southeastern pocket gopher equally high priority conservation condition. Land management practices of restoring longleaf pine habitat on both public and individual land have been discussed, only at that place is notwithstanding little information about their specific habitat needs.

Additional Resources

Pembleton , Edward F., and Steven I. Williams. "Geomys pinetis." Mammalian Species 86 (January 1978): one-4.

Warren Ashley E., L. Mike Conner, Steven B. Castleberry, and Daniel Markewitz. "Home Range, Survival, and Activeness Patterns of the Southeastern Pocket Gopher: Implications for Translocation." Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management 8 (December 2017): 544-57.

Source: http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-4161

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