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8 February 2022 Prevalence and location of survivable skeletal injuries in two North American tree squirrels (Sciurus)
Nancy D. Moncrief, Liberty Hightower, Alfred J. Mead, Kaloyan Ivanov
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Abstract

Skeletal injuries, especially broken bones, diminish physical mobility of animals, and they may affect an individual's ability to obtain food and to evade predators. We quantified and compared healed fractures in two sympatric species of tree squirrels (Sciurus niger Linnaeus, 1758 and S. carolinensis Gmelin, 1788) that differ in body size (mass) and locomotor mode. We assessed the number and location of healed fractures in two urban populations of S. carolinensis and in individuals of both species from one rural location. We found a higher-than-expected proportion of healed fractures in older animals of both species. However, we detected no deviations from expected in the number of healed fractures between the two species or between sexes within a species. Urban populations of S. carolinensis exhibited significantly higher-than-expected proportions of healed fractures, and they were approximately 4.5 times more likely to have a healed injury as compared to rural S. carolinensis. Our findings suggest that S. carolinensis in urban populations experience a higher rate of injury and/or a higher rate of survival after injury than those in rural populations.

© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Society of Mammalogists, www.mammalogy.org.
Nancy D. Moncrief, Liberty Hightower, Alfred J. Mead, and Kaloyan Ivanov "Prevalence and location of survivable skeletal injuries in two North American tree squirrels (Sciurus)," Journal of Mammalogy 103(3), 663-671, (8 February 2022). https://doi.org/10.1093/jmammal/gyab131
Received: 30 January 2021; Accepted: 23 October 2021; Published: 8 February 2022
KEYWORDS
arboreal
body size
fox squirrel
Gray squirrel
healed break
healed fracture
rural
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