Northern Flying Squirrels Do have Multiple Litters!

A note of mine was published in the most recent copy of Northeastern Naturalist "Evidence of Multiple Annual Litters in Glaucomys sabrinus (Northern Flying Squirrel)" by Matthew J. Smith, Graham J. Forbes, and Matthew G. Betts

It has long been suspected that northern flying squirrels like southern flying squirrels and can have more than one litter a year.  Determining the fecundity of flying squirrels is a challenge due to the difficulty of finding nest trees and climbing up trees to count the pups. Our paper was the first to show that flying squirrels can have another litter after successfully raising the first.  One of our radio-collared squirrels (151.820 or "Petunia") had 5 pups in spring and another litter of 5 in the fall.  Quite a handful!

Here is a link to the paper.

http://www.eaglehill.us/NENAonline/articles/NENA-18-3/21-Smith.shtml

We tried to use nest boxes as an easier way to attract female flying squirrels and count pups- but they seemed to prefer the natural cavities.  From 100 nest boxes we only were found 3 active nests with young.  The picture above shows one adult female looking out.  She was protecting four pups.

 This is a typical crack nest in a yellow birch.  Very difficult to reach in.  My arms were stretching while I stood on the last rung of the ladder. Not particularly safe.

Here are the pups from the above nest.  They were 17g in weight, had closed eyes with short hair and thin tails.  I estimated their age to be about 2.5 weeks.

Thesis Finished!!

The defense is over and thesis submitted.  The long journey is now finished.  Thanks to all the very hard work by a dedicated field staff including: 

Michael Avery, John-William Brunner, Blair Cabot, Sophie Cauvy, Patrick Coleman, Cate Champion, Heather Fleming, Glen Forbes, Matt Hadley, Angela Freeman, Justin Léger, Kiyono Katsumata, Scott Leblanc, Mathieu McCann, Shavonne Meyer, Carolyn Richardson, Trina Rytwinski, Gioia Serena, Eric Shaffer, Bryan Taylor, Karen Tomkins, and Jeremy Thibodeau.

Thanks to all of my family and friends for support, especially my wife Lindsey.  Having three small children while doing fieldwork is really crazy...but we did it!

Nearing the end!

I have submitted my thesis and waiting for my defense date to be set. I am also in the process of submitting papers from my thesis. One chapter has already been published in Landscape Ecology. The link to the abstract.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/0xl7532qg62152p3/

In a nutshell...we found that mature forest is important for the movement of flying squirrels- we found this out by moving flying squirrels (translocation) varying distances across different landscape types (low to high amounts of mature forest and connectivity).

Another paper will be published this month in Northeastern Naturalist on the evidence of double litters in Northern Flying Squirrels. I will post a copy when it comes out.

A big thanks to everyone (the many many field workers) who helped me over the years, and especially my family- Lindsey, Ira, Hannah and Esme.

It was an adventure!

Matt