RED TREE VOLE

Red tree vole

Katie Dugger, Chad Marks-Fife

Latin name: Arborimus longicaudus

The Red Tree Vole is a small, arboreal vole that lives high in the canopy of conifer trees in mature forests in Oregon and Washington. This species is an important dietary component for Northern Spotted Owl and other forest predators and is a species of concern given its dependence on mature forest and difficulty associated with monitoring population trends. My former M.S. student, Chad Marks-Fife and I developed an approach that allowed us to age vole remains found in spotted owl pellets, providing an index to age distributions in vole populations subjected to spotted owl predation. In addition, we developed a line transect survey approach to more accurately monitor the presence or absence of this species in a forested landscape, and this work is an information revision of USDA Forest Service survey protocols for Red Tree Voles on federal lands.  

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Publications: 

Marks-Fife, Chad Thesis