Mammals of North-Central Texas

Abstract

North-central Texas includes five counties along the central part of the northern border of Texas. Of the 66 kinds of mammals recorded, 59 are native species and more than a third of these find their eastern or western limits of range in the area. Eastern woodland forms occupy the eastern part of the area, and Great Plains kinds the western. The Red River permits migration of both eastern and western species. Some westward immigration of eastern mammals has occurred in recent years. North-central Texas, as here defined, includes five counties that extend eastward from the eastern base of the Texas Panhandle along the Red River and make up approximately the central third of the northern border of the state. The counties, from west to east, are: Hardeman, Wilbarger, Wichita, Clay, and Montague. The area is 150 miles from west to east and averages about 30 miles from north to south. Elements of two distinct mammalian faunas meet in north-central Texas. The land west of Hardeman County is semiarid grassland and brushland and possesses a mammalian fauna typical of the Great Plains. From Montague County eastward the land is wooded and the mammals there are more typical of the woodlands of southeastern United States. From Hardeman County to Montague County the en- vironment is transitional and there is also a transition from a fauna typical of the Great Plains to a fauna of the southeastern woodlands. Many species of mammals range completely across north-central Texas. However, more than one third of the 59 full species of native mammals here listed find their eastern or western limit of range in the five-county area here considered. The woodland vole, for example, ex- tends no farther west than Montague County, and the northern grass- hopper mouse ranges no farther east than Wichita County. Neither of these species seems to have an ecological counterpart in the opposite fauna. The eastern woodrat and the southern plains woodrat meet in Clay and Montague counties. The ranges of these two species may overlap slightly but the animals are otherwise allopatric, and doubt- less they are ecological competitors.