Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Rodentia > Muridae > Meriones > Meriones unguiculatus

Meriones unguiculatus (Mongolian jird)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

Meriones unguiculatus, the Mongolian jird or Mongolian gerbil is a rodent belonging to subfamily Gerbillinae. It is the most widely known species of the gerbil subfamily, and is the usual gerbil species to be kept as a pet or experimental animal, when it is known as the domesticated gerbil. Like the Syrian or golden hamster, it was first brought to the United States in 1954 by Dr. Victor Schwentker for use in research. Forty-four pairs were caught in Mongolia and brought to England. They were described as "squirrel colors... with long furry tails." They are somewhat larger than mice, with a body about 12 cm long (and a tail of similar length), with body mass averaging 50-55 grams in females and 60 grams in males.
View Wikipedia Record: Meriones unguiculatus

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
2
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
17
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 5.63
EDGE Score: 1.89
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  53 grams
Birth Weight [1]  3 grams
Diet [2]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Frugivore, Granivore, Herbivore
Diet - Fruit [2]  10 %
Diet - Invertibrates [2]  20 %
Diet - Plants [2]  50 %
Diet - Seeds [2]  20 %
Forages - Ground [2]  100 %
Female Maturity [1]  43 days
Male Maturity [1]  36 days
Gestation [1]  25 days
Litter Size [1]  5
Litters / Year [1]  4
Maximum Longevity [1]  6 years
Snout to Vent Length [3]  4.331 inches (11 cm)
Weaning [1]  24 days

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Name IUCN Category Area acres Location Species Website Climate Land Use
Daurskiy Biosphere Reserve 562659 Russia  
Great Gobi National Park Ia 13211440 Mongolia  
Ubsunurskaya Kotlovina (Ubsunur Depression) Zapovednik Ia 798640 Tuva, Russia

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
Mountains of Central Asia Afghanistan, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan No

Consumers

Range Map

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
♦ 4Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
♦ 5International Flea Database
♦ 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.
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