Endangered
Helan Shan pika
Ochotona argentata
The Helan Shan pika or silver pika is a rock-dwelling species of pika that is endemic to a small region of the Helan Mountains in Inner Mongolia and Ningxia, China.
Appearance
Its ears are widely spaced and the feet are covered with white, slightly buff fur. The pika's body fur changes colour with the season, being orange-red across the head and back and light gray underneath in summer, and silver across the entire upper body and back and white to buff on the underside in winter. An indistinct white stripe borders the pika's ears, that maintain a gray colouration throughout the year and do not become red in summer.
The Helan Shan pika has an adult head and body length of 208 to 235 millimetres (8.2 to 9.3 in), ear diameter of 22 to 25 mm (0.87 to 0.98 in), hind foot length of 31 to 35 mm (1.2 to 1.4 in) and weight of 176 to 236 grams (6.2 to 8.3 oz). The length of these foramina, as well as the large size of the pika's orbits (eye sockets), allows for differentiation of Helan Shan pika specimens from those of the alpine pika, that has shorter palatal foramina and smaller orbits.
Range and habitat
The Helan Shan pika is endemic to and only occurs in the Helan Mountains in the Inner Mongolia and Ningxia regions of China that lie between the semi-arid Ordos Desert and the Yellow River Valley to the east and the Badain Jaran Desert to the west. The pika occupies a region covering 107 km2 (41 sq mi) of the mountain range. It occurs at elevations up to 3,000 m (9,800 ft).
Habitat labels include shrubland and forest.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
It is a generalized herbivore and feeds on grass and other green vegetation. It is somewhat more vocal during the breeding season in the spring and at midday in the winter.
The breeding season lasts from early April to August, and females produce a single litter of two to four young within a year. The Helan Shan pika is an herbivore and builds haypiles out of vegetation for food storage, like most other pikas. It makes little noise compared to other pikas, outside of the breeding season, and is potentially active at night.
In crisis
It is closely related to Pallas's pika, and is listed as an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature due to deforestation across its limited distribution. This habitat was presumed to be only 3 km2 (1.2 sq mi) on the first surveys of the species, leading the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to evaluate it as a critically endangered species in 1996. Surveys by an ornithologist working in the region that happened to note the pika increased its potential range to 107 km2 (41 sq mi), that caused it to no longer meet the criteria for critically endangered species.
Its population size is unknown, but is likely to be decreasing as a result of logging activities within its range resulting in loss of habitat. Individuals are noted as being especially sensitive to changes in temperature, that affects their ability to disperse from shelter to safer potential habitats and may be a detriment to the species as climate change affects the region.
Helan Shan pika is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Helan Shan pika, Wikidata item Q430772. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
