Museum, University of Nebraska State
Date of this Version
12-5-1939
Citation
Missouri Valley Fauna (December 5, 1939) Number 1, 8 p.
Abstract
Beginning in the fall of 1913, the writer has continuously been interested in accumulating accurate body measurements, taken in the flesh, of Nebraska pocket-gophers. As a result quite an assemblage of such data has been secured. In the case of Geomys bursarius, the bulk of these data relates to specimens trapped in the vicinity of Lincoln, Lancaster County, involving to date 48 adult and 38 immature males and 50 adult and 65 immature females. Recently these measurements have been tabulated and compared with such measurements of the species as have been recorded in the literature from other parts of its range.
The writer realizes the undesirability of unduly multiplying the named mammalian subspecies that are based solely or primarily upon size characters (so-called "millimeter subspecies"), but after a careful study of the measurement data summarized in the preceding Tables 1 and 2 has concluded that the unusually large form of prairie pocket-gopher inhabiting eastern Nebraska and western and south-central Iowa merits subspecific recognition by name, and therefore proposes that it be called Geomys bursarius majusculus subsp. nov.
Comments
Occasional Papers on the Animal Life of the Missouri Valley Region Published by Missouri Valley Fauna, Lincoln, Nebraska