The Distribution of Squirrels in England and Wales, 1959
1962; Wiley; Volume: 31; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/2337
ISSN1365-2656
Autores Tópico(s)Yersinia bacterium, plague, ectoparasites research
ResumoThe distribution of grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis Gmelin) and red squirrels (S. vulgaris leucourus Kerr) in England and Wales since 1944 has been well chronicled by Shorten (1946, 1953 and 1957). The present inquiry was to record the further distribution and spread of grey squirrels in England and Wales. Introduced in 1953, the Government bounty on grey squirrels was withdrawn in 1958 because it was then becoming clear that it was not effecting a permanent reduction in grey squirrel numbers. The bounty is of interest to this inquiry because it was not known whether the spread of grey squirrels had in any way been checked by it. Middleton (1930) and Shorten (1957) had observed that red squirrels tended to disappear in areas colonized by grey squirrels. The ecological significance of this is not fully understood but it is clearly valuable, within the limits of accuracy of such surveys, to record chronologically the advance of one species and the shrinking distribution of the other, irrespective of the population sizes. Further, it was intended to define areas where the two species of squirrel occur alone, and where they occur together.
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