The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ecological Observations on the Woodrat,
Neotoma floridana, by Henry S. Fitch and Dennis G. Rainey

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Title: Ecological Observations on the Woodrat, Neotoma floridana

Author: Henry S. Fitch
Dennis G. Rainey

Release Date: August 29, 2010 [EBook #33566]

Language: English

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UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PUBLICATIONS
MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

Volume 8, No. 9, pp. 499-533, 3 figs.

June 12, 1956

Ecological Observations on the Woodrat, Neotoma floridana

BY

HENRY S. FITCH AND DENNIS G. RAINEY

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
LAWRENCE
1956

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PUBLICATIONS, MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

Editors: E. Raymond Hall, Chairman, A. Byron Leonard,
Robert W. Wilson

Volume 8, No. 9, pp. 499-533
Published June 12, 1956

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
Lawrence, Kansas

PRINTED BY
FERD VOILAND, JR., STATE PRINTER
TOPEKA, KANSAS
1956

ECOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE WOODRAT, NEOTOMA FLORIDANA

By

Henry S. Fitch and Dennis G. Rainey

_Introduction_

The eastern woodrat exerts important effects on its community associates
by its use of the vegetation for food, by providing shelter in its stick
houses for many other small animals, and by providing a food supply for
certain flesh-eaters. In the course of our observations on this rodent
on the University of Kansas Natural History Reservation, extending over
an eight-year period, from February, 1948, to February, 1956, these
effects have changed greatly as the population of woodrats has
constantly changed in density, and in extent of the area occupied.

This report is concerned with the population of woodrats on the
Reservation, the changes that the species has undergone, and the factors
that have affected it. Our two sets of field data, used as a basis for
this report, supplement each other and overlap little, either in time or
space. Fitch's field work which covered approximately the western half
of the Reservation,