Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Rodentia > Sciuridae > Cynomys > Cynomys ludovicianus

Cynomys ludovicianus (black-tailed prairie dog; Arizona black-tailed prairie dog)

Synonyms:
Language: Spanish

Wikipedia Abstract

The black-tailed prairie dog (Cynomys ludovicianus), is a rodent of the family Sciuridae found in the Great Plains of North America from about the United States-Canada border to the USA-Mexico border. Unlike some other prairie dogs, these animals do not truly hibernate. The black-tailed prairie dog can be seen above ground in midwinter. A black-tailed prairie dog town in Texas was reported to cover 25,000 sq mi (64,000 km2) and included 400,000,000 individuals. Prior to habitat destruction, this species may have been the most abundant prairie dog in central North America. This species was one of two described by the Lewis and Clark Expedition in the journals and diaries of their expedition.
View Wikipedia Record: Cynomys ludovicianus

Infraspecies

Cynomys ludovicianus arizonensis (Arizona black-tailed prairie dog)
Cynomys ludovicianus ludovicianus

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
1
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
11
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 3.46
EDGE Score: 1.5
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  2.48 lbs (1.125 kg)
Birth Weight [1]  16 grams
Male Weight [3]  2.315 lbs (1.05 kg)
Diet [2]  Herbivore
Diet - Plants [2]  100 %
Forages - Ground [2]  100 %
Female Maturity [1]  2 years
Male Maturity [1]  2 years
Gestation [1]  30 days
Litter Size [1]  4
Litters / Year [1]  1
Maximum Longevity [1]  11 years
Snout to Vent Length [3]  13 inches (33 cm)
Weaning [1]  63 days

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
Madrean Pine-Oak Woodlands Mexico, United States No

Prey / Diet

Prey / Diet Overlap

Predators

Consumers

Range Map

External References

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
♦ 2Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
♦ 3Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 4Black-tailed Prairie Dog Food Habits and Forage Relationships in Western South Dakota, DANIEL W. URESK, Journal of Range Management Vol. 37, No. 4, July 1984, p. 325-329
♦ 5Cynomys ludovicianus, John L. Hoogland, MAMMALIAN SPECIES No. 535, pp. 1-10 (1996)
♦ 6Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 7SPECIES ASSESSMENT FOR SWIFT FOX (VULPES VELOX) IN WYOMING, DARBY N. DARK-SMILEY AND DOUGLAS A. KEINATH, prepared for United States Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management, December 2003
♦ 8International Flea Database
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0