Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Rodentia > Cricetidae > Arvicola > Arvicola amphibius

Arvicola amphibius (European water vole)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

The European water vole or northern water vole, Arvicola amphibius (formerly A. terrestris), is a semi-aquatic rodent. It is often informally called the water rat, although it only superficially resembles a true rat. Water voles have rounder noses than rats, deep brown fur, chubby faces and short fuzzy ears; unlike rats their tails, paws and ears are covered with hair. In the wild, on average, water voles only live about five months. Maximum longevity in captivity is two and a half years.
View Wikipedia Record: Arvicola amphibius

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  120 grams
Birth Weight [1]  5 grams
Diet [2]  Frugivore, Herbivore
Diet - Fruit [2]  20 %
Diet - Plants [2]  80 %
Forages - Ground [2]  100 %
Female Maturity [1]  51 days
Male Maturity [1]  45 days
Gestation [1]  21 days
Litter Size [1]  5
Litters / Year [1]  3
Maximum Longevity [1]  3 years
Snout to Vent Length [3]  8 inches (21 cm)
Weaning [1]  14 days

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Ecosystems

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
Caucasus Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, Russia, Turkey No
Irano-Anatolian Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Turkmenistan No
Mediterranean Basin Algeria, Egypt, France, Greece, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Portugal, Spain, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey No
Mountains of Central Asia Afghanistan, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan No

Prey / Diet

Juncus effusus (common rush)[4]
Molinia arundinacea (purple moorgrass)[4]

Prey / Diet Overlap

Competing SpeciesCommon Prey Count
Ondatra zibethicus (muskrat)1

Predators

Consumers

External References

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
♦ 4Ecology of Commanster
♦ 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.
♦ 6DIET COMPOSITION OF THE LONG-EARED OWL IN SLOVENIA: SEASONAL VARIATION IN PREY USE, DAVORIN TOME, J Raptor Res. 28(4):253-258
♦ 7Avian and mammalian predators of shrews in Europe: regional differences, between-year and seasonal variation, and mortality due to predation, Erkki Korpimäki & Kai Norrdahl, Ann. Zool. Fennici 26:389-400. 1989
♦ 8Contribution to the study of the diet of four owl species (Aves, Strigiformes) from mainland and island areas of Greece, Haralambos Alivizatos, Vassilis Goutner and Stamatis Zogaris, Belg. J. Zool., 135 (2) : 109-118
♦ 95.5 Corsac, Vulpes corsac, A. Poyarkov and N. Ovsyanikov, Sillero-Zubiri, C., Hoffmann, M. and Macdonald, D.W. (eds). 2004. Canids: Foxes, Wolves, Jackals and Dogs. Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan. IUCN/SSC Canid Specialist Group. Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK. x + 430 pp.
♦ 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