SquirrelWeb

Students at a school in Stubbington, Hampshire in the south of England have been puzzled by sightings of a purple couloured, grey squirrel which they have named Pete. There are also several photographs giving authority the story. The reason behind the squirrels fancy coat colour seems to be related to its behaviour of going in and out of a building that stores old computer ink cartridges. Somehow some ink has become distributed over its body, probably aided and abetted by the squirrel grooming itself. See the storey on the BBC News Web Page, The Daily Telegraph, and the Metro. On such a colourful note, the SquirrelWeb team would like to wish everyone a Very Merry Xmas and a Happy 2009.

The 5th International Colloquium on Arboreal Squirrels will be held between July 31 to August 4, 2009 at Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada. As per previous colloquia in the US, England and India, this meeting will serve to bring together researchers from around the world that work on all aspects of arboreal squirrels. Please see their website for further details.

Recently a grey squirrel has been seen near Inverness in the Highlands, Scotland in the heart of native, red squirrel country. It is thought possible that the animal may have got there on the back of a lorry (see BBC News story news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/highlands_and_islands/7364769.stm). Hopefully, there is only one animal and it is not carrying squirrelpox virus, which is fatal to red squirrels. This is a further worry to the conservation of red squirrels in Scotland following the recent identification of squirrelpox virus on an Estate near Dumfrees in the south of Scotland (see BBC News story news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/south_of_scotland/7362810.stm).

A Prevost’s squirrel (Callosciurus prevosti) normally found in lowland and montane forests in Southeast Asia, has turned up in the garden of a resident in the City of Leeds in northern England. The attractive animal, with black back and tail, white sides, and reddish-brown underside and limbs has probably escaped from a pet shop or zoo – see article in the The Mail on Sunday at: www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=511332&in_page_id=1770.

The coastal pine woodlands at the National Trust Reserve at Formby hold one of the few remaining strongholds for red squirrels in northern England. However, recent news that the deadly squirrelpox virus, carried by alien grey squirrels, has entered the population is very worrying for their continuing survival. Walkers and local residents have been asked to remain vigilant for signs of sick or dead squirrels and to report back to the on-site warden. For further details, please see:

icseftonandwestlancs.icnetwork.co.uk/icformby/news/tm_headline=help-us-to-save-red-squirrels&method=full&objectid=20142359&siteid=60252-name_page.html

A red squirrel was seen by passengers on a pleasure boat on Lake Ullswater in the Lake District in northern England; the animal was at least 270 m from the shore. The squirrel hitched a lift on the boat and returned to shore unscathed. For more on this story see news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cumbria/7096816.stm

A sick red squirrel with signs of squirrelpox virus was found near Lockerbie in south-west Scotland (20 miles from the border with England) on Tuesday 8th May. The squirrel was killed and tested at the Moredun Institute in Edinburgh, who confirmed the presence of the deadly virus believed to be carried by grey squirrels. This has important consequences for red squirrel conservation efforts in Scotland. Details can be found in a SNH press release at www.snh.org.uk/press/detail.asp?id=1693.

Squirrels have bitten to death a stray dog which was barking at them in a Russian park. This is a story reported by the BBC News on the 1st December 2006 and has just come to the notice of the SquirrelWeb team. Black squirrels apparently attacked a dog in a park in the village of Lazo in eastern Russia. When people appeared, they ran off carrying lumps of flesh. One local man attributed it to a lack of pine cones last year. The full storey can be found here news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4489792.stm.

Marta López-Darias

The ecology of the invasion of the Barbary Ground Squirrel on Fuerteventura Island (Canary Islands)

Background

In 1965, the Barbary Ground Squirrel (Atlantoxerus getulus), a rodent native to Morocco and small areas of Algeria, was introduced onto Fuerteventura Is. Two squirrels were brought in as pets, but they were soon released and the species successfully colonized the island. Some 40 years after the invasion, few data exist on the ecology of the ground squirrel and its impacts on the native flora and fauna. In 2003 I began a PhD which was focused on the ecology of this invasion.

Objectives

The main objectives pursued in this thesis are: 1) to understand why the species was so successful in colonizing the island; 2) to explore some of the impacts that the species might have.

Objective 1

Four factors have been considered to understand the success of the invasion:

• Climate suitability on the island. To explore this we have used predictive climatic models based on presence data of the ground squirrel in its native range and extrapolated the conditions to Fuerteventura Is. and the whole archipelago.
• Habitat availability on the island. I have studied various habitat variables that are associated with the presence of the ground squirrels.
• Presence of predators in the island vs. in the native distribution area. I study the diets of all the potential predators on the island and compared these with data available from the continent.
• Parasite load. I have explored both the ecto- and endoparasites of the species on the island and in Marocco. There are fewer parastites in the island population than in its native range.

Objective 2

Two potential impacts of this rodent have been explored during this project:

• The impacts on predators populations. One species of raptor, the Common Buzzard (Buteo buteo) appears to have been affected by the presence of this new prey.
• The impacts on disruption on the dispersal mechanisms of native fleshy-fruit plant species.

The project is almost finished and many results are under review by different journals.

Study area

This study was mainly done in Fuerteventura Island, Canarian Archipelago. The Canarian Archipelago consists of seven main volcanic islands situated between 27º-29ºN and 13º-18ºW off the Atlantic coast of north-west Africa. Fuerteventura is the second largest island (1660 km2), the second lowest in altitude (807 m a.s.l.), the oldest and is the nearest to the African continent (approximately 100 km distant).

Financial support and collaborators

This work was mainly financed by La Obra Social de La Caja de Canarias and Cabildo de Fuerteventura, as well as by a fellowship to me supported by the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia.The study was done with the continuous support of Dr. Fernando Hiraldo. Dr. Manuel Nogales, Dr. Jorge Lobo and Dr. Carlos Feliu collaborated partially with it.

For further details, contact Marta López-Darias, Island Ecology and Evolution Research Group, Instituto de Productos Naturales y Agrobiología, IPNA-CSIC, 38206-La Laguna, Tenerife, Canary Islands. Email: , 

This new book by Richard W. Thorington Jr. and Katie Ferrell has recently been published by John Hopkins University Press. The book contains over 100 photographs and, using a question-and-answer format, covers all aspects of the diverse squirrel family.

To find out more and how to order your own copy, go to JHUP.

Also see our Publications web page.