Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Rodentia > Cricetidae > Ondatra > Ondatra zibethicus

Ondatra zibethicus (muskrat; muskbeaver)

Synonyms:
Language: French

Wikipedia Abstract

The muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus), the only species in genus Ondatra and tribe Ondatrini, is a medium-sized semiaquatic rodent native to North America, and is an introduced species in parts of Europe, Asia, and South America. The muskrat is found in wetlands over a wide range of climates and habitats. It has important effects on the ecology of wetlands, and is a resource of food and fur for humans.
View Wikipedia Record: Ondatra zibethicus

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
3
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
21
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 7.57
EDGE Score: 2.15
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Gestation [2]  26 days
Litter Size [2]  7
Litters / Year [2]  3
Maximum Longevity [4]  10 years
Nocturnal [1]  Yes
Snout to Vent Length [4]  12 inches (30 cm)
Water Biome [1]  Lakes and Ponds, Rivers and Streams
Weaning [2]  25 days
Adult Weight [2]  3.003 lbs (1.362 kg)
Birth Weight [2]  23 grams
Diet [3]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Herbivore
Diet - Invertibrates [3]  10 %
Diet - Plants [3]  90 %
Forages - Ground [3]  100 %
Female Maturity [2]  9 months 15 days
Male Maturity [2]  9 months 15 days

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

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Ecosystems

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
California Floristic Province Mexico, United States No

Habitat Vegetation Classification

Name Location  Website 
Bald-cypress - Water Tupelo Floodplain Forest United States (Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, Texas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi)
Bald-cypress Floodplain Forest United States (Oklahoma, South Carolina, Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky, Illinois, Florida, Louisiana, Virginia, Missouri, Texas)
Central Interior Buttonbush Pond United States (Kentucky, Oklahoma, Alabama, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, West Virginia, Illinois, Ohio, Arkansas, Tennessee)
Midwest Mixed Emergent Deep Marsh Canada (Ontario); United States (Missouri, Tennessee, Iowa, South Dakota, Illinois, Nebraska, North Dakota, Kentucky, Alabama, Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin)
Southeast Coastal Plain Buttonbush Pond United States (Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Kentucky, Georgia)
Terrace Hardwood Floodplain Forest United States (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts)
Water Tupelo Swamp Forest United States (Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, Illinois, Louisiana, Kentucky, Georgia)

Prey / Diet

Prey / Diet Overlap

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Predators

Providers

Consumers

Range Map

External References

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Myers, 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
♦ 2de 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
♦ 3Hamish 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
♦ 4Nathan 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
♦ 5Study of Northern Virginia Ecology
♦ 6Ecology of Commanster
♦ 7Exploring the Denali Food Web, ParkWise, National Park Service
♦ 8Jorrit 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.
♦ 9Diet of the Steller’s Sea Eagle in the Northern Sea of Okhotsk, Irina UTEKHINA, Eugene POTAPOV & Michael J. MCGRADY, First Symposium on Steller’s and White-tailed Sea Eagles in East Asia pp. 71-82, 2000
♦ 10Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
♦ 11International 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