Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Soricomorpha > Soricidae > Sorex > Sorex hoyi

Sorex hoyi (pygmy shrew; American Pygmy Shrew)

Synonyms: Microsorex hoyi; Sorex thompsoni
Language: French

Wikipedia Abstract

The American pygmy shrew (Sorex hoyi) is a small shrew found in Northern Alaska, Canada and the northern United States down through the Appalachian Mountains. It was first discovered in 1831 by naturalist William Cane in Georgian Bay, Parry Sound. This animal is found in northern coniferous and deciduous forests of North America. It is believed to be the second smallest mammal in the world, but has an extremely large appetite for its size. Due to its fast metabolism, it needs to eat constantly. It digs through moist soils and decaying leaf litter for food.
View Wikipedia Record: Sorex hoyi

Infraspecies

Sorex hoyi alnorum
Sorex hoyi eximius
Sorex hoyi hoyi (American pygmy shrew)
Sorex hoyi montanus
Sorex hoyi thompsoni (Thompson's pygmy shrew)
Sorex hoyi winnemana

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
2
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
17
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 5.36
EDGE Score: 1.85
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  4 grams
Diet [2]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Carnivore (Vertebrates)
Diet - Invertibrates [2]  70 %
Diet - Scavenger [2]  30 %
Forages - Ground [2]  100 %
Litter Size [3]  6
Litters / Year [3]  1
Maximum Longevity [3]  1 year
Nocturnal [4]  Yes
Snout to Vent Length [3]  2.362 inches (6 cm)

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Predators

Strix nebulosa (Great Grey Owl)[5]

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Amalaraeus dissimilis[6]
Corrodopsylla curvata curvata[6]
Stenoponia americana (American mouse flea)[6]

Range Map

External References

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Microsorex hoyi and Microsorex thompsoni, Charles A. Long, MAMMALIAN SPECIES No. 33, pp. 1-4 (1974)
♦ 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
♦ 4Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. 2006. The Animal Diversity Web (online). Accessed February 01, 2010 at animaldiversity.org
♦ 5Jorrit 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.
♦ 6International Flea Database
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
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