Sciurus aureogaster
| Red-bellied Squirrel
(Sciurus aureogaster) | |
|---|---|
| Range | |
 | |
| Taxonomic classification | |
| Order: | Rodentia |
| Suborder: | Sciuromorpha |
| Family: | Sciuridae |
| Subfamily: | Sciurinae |
| Tribe: | Sciurini |
| Subgenus: | Sciurus |
| Binomial details | |
| Sciurus aureogaster F. Cuvier in É. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire & F. Cuvier, 1829 | |
| Other resources | |
| Full taxonomic details at MDD | |
The Red-bellied Squirrel (Sciurus aureogaster) are native to Mexico and Guatemala. Four individuals were introduced to Elliot Key in Florida in 1938 by a resident (Brown and McGuire 1969, 1975).
From Koprowski et al. (2017): "Four S. aureogaster (2 males, 2 females; 1 melanistic, 3 redbellied) were introduced to Elliott Key, Dade County, Florida, in 1938 from eastern Mexico (Brown 1969). S. aureogaster was common across much of the 10.4 km2 tropical island within 15 years and reached nearby Adams and Sands keys (Schwartz 1952; Brown and McGuire 1969, 1975; Brown 1969, 1997). Although Hurricane Andrew, a category 5 hurricane, submerged the island under a 6 m storm surge in 1992 (Ogden 1992), squirrels survived the storm (Koprowski et al. 2005) and spread to nearby Sands Key and Old Rhodes Key, but no longer occurred on Adams Key (Palmer et al. 2014). An effort to remove this introduced population from the islands of south Florida began in 2008, and 49 individuals of both color morphs had been removed from Elliott Key and Sands Key by 2012 (Pernas and Clark 2011; Palmer 2012)."
References
Brown LN. 1969. An exotic squirrel found in Florida. Florida Wildlife 23:4–5.
Brown LN. 1997. Mammals of Florida. Windward Publishing Company, Miami, Florida.
Brown LN, McGuire RJ. 1969. Status of the red-bellied squirrel (Sciurus aureogaster) in the Florida Keys. American Midland Naturalist 82:629–630.
Brown LN, McGuire RJ. 1975. Field ecology of the exotic Mexican red-bellied squirrel in Florida. Journal of Mammalalogy 56:405–419.
Koprowski JL, Kellison GT, Moneysmith SL. 2005. Status of red-bellied squirrels (Sciurus aureogaster) introduced to Elliott Key, Florida. Florida Field Naturalist 33:128–129.
Koprowski JL, Nieto-Montes de Oca A, Palmer GH, Ramos-Lara N, Timm RM. 2017. Sciurus aureogaster (Rodentia: Sciuridae). Mammalian Species 49(951):81-92.
Ogden JC. 1992. The impact of Hurricane Andrew on the ecosystems of South Florida. Conservation Biology 6:488–490.
Palmer GH. 2012. Ecological assessment of red-bellied squirrels (Sciurus aureogaster) introduced to Elliott Key, Florida. M.S. thesis, University of Arizona, Tucson.
Palmer GH, Koprowski JL, Pernas AJ. 2014. Distribution and spread of an introduced insular population of red-bellied squirrels (Sciurus aureogaster) in Florida. Mammalia 78(1):67-73.
Pernas AJ, Clark DW. 2011. A summary of the current progress toward eradication of the Mexican gray squirrel (Sciurus aureogaster F. Cuvier, 1829) from Biscayne National Park, Florida, USA. In: (C.R. Veitch, M.N. Clout and D.R. Towns, eds.) Island invasives: eradication and management. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland. pp. 222–224.
Schwartz A. 1952. The land mammals of southern Florida and the upper Florida Keys. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.