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

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