Endangered
Mearns's squirrel
Tamiasciurus mearnsi
Mearns's squirrel (Tamiasciurus douglasii mearnsi) is a subspecies of the Douglas squirrel endemic to Mexico.
Appearance
There is a stripe of solid black fur on each flank, and a narrow band of reddish-yellow fur runs down the middle of the back. The tail is bushy, with darker fur than the body, but fringed with white and yellow. The fur on the head is mostly grey, becoming yellowish towards the snout, and with dark ears and clear rings of white fur around the eyes.
Mearns's squirrel is a relatively small tree squirrel, with an average head-body length of 20 cm (7.9 in), and weighing about 270 g (9.5 oz).
Range and habitat
The region is surrounded by areas of chaparral and desert, isolating the tree squirrel from its closest relatives elsewhere, and indicating that it is likely a relict population isolated by forest fragmentation during the Pleistocene. The three sites all consist of pine and fir forests at altitudes of 2,100–2,400 m (6,900–7,900 ft), and cover an area of no more than 40,655 ha (157 sq mi). Mearns's squirrel (Tamiasciurus douglasii mearnsi) is a subspecies of the Douglas squirrel endemic to Mexico.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
Mearns's squirrel is diurnal and herbivorous, feeding mainly on the seeds of fir and pine trees.
In crisis
It is endangered and occurs in low densities, and is threatened by habitat loss. It is possibly also threatened by competition from the eastern gray squirrel, that was introduced to the range of Mearns's squirrel in 1946, but may not be present anymore.
Mearns's squirrel 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 Mearns's squirrel, Wikidata item Q1762156. 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.
