Litter Records of Some Mammals of Meade County, Kansas

Abstract

Field parties from the University Museum of Vertebrate Paleontology worked in Meade County, Kansas in the summers of 1940 and 1941. During July and August of these two years there was so much rainfall at times that it was impossible to work on fossils. Consequently, a considerable amount of time was spent collecting and studying the recent mammals of that area. Part of the data thus obtained is presented in this paper. general discussion of the mammals of the Meade County State Park was presented by Joe A. Tihen and James M. Sprague in Amphibians, Reptiles and Mammals of the Meade County State Park, Trans. Kans. Acad. Sci., 42:499-511, 1939. Claude W. Hibbard and George C. Rinker published a more specific paper on A New Bog-lemming (Synaptomys) from Meade County, Kansas, Univ. Kans. Sci. Bull., Vol. 28, Pt. 1, pp. 25-35. 1942. References have been drawn from both of these papers in the following discussion. Cryptotis parva (Say). One female of this species with three embryos was taken on July 22, 1941, and a second, with five embryos, on July 25, 1941. In each case, the embryos measured approximately 10 mm. in length. Citellus spilosoma major (Merriam). In all, five adult females of C. s. major were taken, three on August 3, 1941, one on August 4, 1941, and one on August 9, 1941. Of the three taken on August 3, two were carry.ng embryos. One of them had 8 embryos and the other 6. female taken August 9 was captured after being ploughed up in a wheat field. With her were 4 young, two of which were captured and proved to be about two-thirds grown. Evidently two litters of young are born during the summer. Onychomys leucogaster arcticeps (Rhoads). Only one female with embryos was taken. This specimen, taken August 9, 1941, had five embryos. number of immature and sub-adults were taken at the same time as the female mentioned above, which indicates that that litter represented at least the second and possibly the third litter of the season. This is in accordance with the conclusion of Tihen and Sprague (op. cit.) who wrote of this species, The grasshopper mouse in Kansas has at least two litters a season, for females bearing full time fetuses were taken June 18, and 30, 1938, and July 20, 1938, while a female bearing fetuses approximately one-fifth grown was taken July 16, 1938. Four to five young is the common number. Reithrodontomys megalotis (Baird). One female of this species, with embryos, was taken July 19, 1941. number of embryos in this specimen was four. They were five mm. in length. total number of females taken was five.