gray squirrels north of Ely

[Beckie Prange]

Has anyone been seeing gray squirrels north of Ely? I saw my first this morning, as it was chased by a red squirrel across Winton Road between 88 and Cedar Lake Road. And just a little while ago, I spotted one here at the research center.

Is this pretty new, or have I just been astoundingly unobservant? Usually, deviations from the norm catch my eye (or ear) pretty quickly.

Beckie

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Beckie Prange

Assistant Scientist / Site Manager | Hubachek Wilderness Research Center | hwrc.cfans.umn.edu

425 Shady Lane, PO Box 96, Ely MN 55731 | 218-365-7766

College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences | cfans.umn.edu

University of Minnesota | umn.edu
she/her/hers

[Carl Karasti]

We have had a few gray squirrels (including at least a couple white ones) in Winton in the past, but the most recent that I'm aware of was many years ago and they didn't last long here – only a year or two before vanishing.  I am not aware of any recent sightings beyond Ely city limits.

Carl Karasti

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[Jesse Ellis]

The Coe Field Station is farther up the line than you, Beckie, and no, I've never ever had one. We've had a great range of sciurids (missing Franklin's Ground Squirrel, but have American Red Squirrel, Least Chipmunk, Eastern Chipmunk, Northern Flying Squirrel, and Woodchuck (three times, and this summer one was swimming across Low Lake!!!). Never an actual Sciurus species.

Jesse

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Jesse Ellis, Ph. D. he/him/his
Director of the Wilderness Field Station
http://www.coe.edu/fieldstation
Associate Professor
Department of Biology

Coe College

1220 1st Ave NE,

Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 52402

The Wilderness Field Station is located on territory where Dakota and Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) lived. Although treaties with the United States government deprived both communities of much of their land in Minnesota, both continue to live in the state, as well as in neighboring states and in Canada.

[clever...@gmail.com]

Jesse,

 

Your mention of least chipmunks caught my attention. Here in Isabella, over the years we’ve had almost exclusively eastern chipmunks coming to our feeders. This year, however, we had a pair of least chipmunks move in. We’re really enjoying them because they’re so fleet afoot and light on their feet they could easily be mistaken for an animated character from a Warner’s Brother cartoon, compared to the ponderously slow easterns.

 

Steve Wilson

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[Jesse Ellis]

I love the Least Chipmunks. They seem (to me) to have an affinity for exposed rock. This year they were in great abundance on the top of our hill eating huckleberries. Usually I don't see them until later in the season, for some reason.

For those unsure about ID, I tell people that Least Chipmunks are objectively cuter. (They also have bolder stripes on the face and farther down the rump.)

[clever...@gmail.com]

Jesse,

 

I spent a fair amount of time checking sources to confirm I was seeing least chipmunks. Of all the identification criteria I found, none was as helpful or apt as your description of “objectively cuter.”

 

Steve

[Roger Powell]

Dear Naturalists,

Eastern chipmunks have rusty butts.  Least chipmunks' stripes go all the way down onto their butts nearly to their tails.  The stripes on least chipmunks, especially on the face, just seem more distinct to me than those on easterns.  And, of course, least chipmunks are smaller.

    peace , , , , , ,

        rog . . . . . .

Roger A Powell
Department of Applied Ecology
North Carolina State University
PO Box 918, Ely, Minnesota 55731

tel. - 218-235-8808
https://cals.ncsu.edu/applied-ecology/people/rpowell-2/

   Husk at leve
      mens du gør det.
   Husk at elske
      mens du tør det.
              Piet Hein

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elyfieldnaturalists/02f701dc1a2f%2445c6e500%24d154af00%24%40gmail.com.

[Carol Orban]

I've certainly seen many gray squirrels IN Ely.

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[Jesse Ellis]

Hey all-

Someone just checked me on a plant name - we have no HUCKLEBERRIES. I meant serviceberries. I have no idea how I confused the names. 

Jesse

Jesse Ellis, Ph. D. he/him/his
Director of the Wilderness Field Station
http://www.coe.edu/fieldstation
Associate Professor
Department of Biology

Coe College

1220 1st Ave NE,

Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 52402

The Wilderness Field Station is located on territory where Dakota and Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) lived. Although treaties with the United States government deprived both communities of much of their land in Minnesota, both continue to live in the state, as well as in neighboring states and in Canada.

[Roger Powell]

Dear Naturalists,

Jesse's huckleberry "mistake" got me to thinking about common names for common organisms.  Birders are well organized and widespread and they have established "official" common names for birds.  Mammallers have had to live with varied local names for mammals from the get go: Was that a woodchuck or a ground hog or a whistle pig?  Was that a ground squirrel or a gopher?  The end result is that mammals do not have official names.  You can call it a bison or a buffalo; it is your call.  Some people appear to think that mammals have official names but the people who spend their lives studying the mammals know that if we go to Vermont we might have to call a fisher a fisher cat.

So, what about huckleberries?  When I was a kid picking berries in northern Wisconsin, we called the blue ones blueberries and the black ones huckleberries.  I now know that they were all blueberries of the same species but some lacked the gene to put the white powder on the berries to make them blue.  We knew what we were talking about, though, and our abilities to communicate amongst ourselves was the most important.  To my knowledge, plants do not have official names.  If I am wrong on this, someone please let me know.  I grew up calling both trembling (or quaking [or quacking?]) aspen and bigtooth aspen both "popple".  I did not know what a balsam poplar was.

Should all Ely Field Naturalists decide to use the common name huckleberry for fruits of the genus Amelanchier, I guess we can do that as long as we all agree and can communicate.  I suggest, however, that we stick with saskatoon or serviceberry or June berry or . . .

    peace , , , , , , ,

        rog . . . . . . . .

Roger A Powell
Department of Applied Ecology
North Carolina State University
PO Box 918, Ely, Minnesota 55731

tel. - 218-235-8808
https://cals.ncsu.edu/applied-ecology/people/rpowell-2/

   Husk at leve
      mens du gør det.
   Husk at elske
      mens du tør det.
              Piet Hein

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elyfieldnaturalists/CAPyT-7tUJi4516%3DSOtRcTyB5x6VnoDQdiR9n10Qs-u79HGLVXA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Carl Karasti]

Some decades ago, back when I was spending a lot of time learning to ID plants (and other things), it was interesting to learn about the multiple common names for them.  One general rule that I was introduced to is that the more popular a plant is — usually meaning it provides something good to eat! — the more common names it will have.  This also was related to how wide spread the plant is, the larger the range and the better the fruit, the more common names a plant will have.  Along with this, the same common name is often used for different plants (fruits, berries) in different areas.  Then there are also English common names and Native American (derived) common names, and the Native American names followed the "rule" of things that were more popular having more names that varied by area.

THIS is why standard system of scientific names, known as binomial nomenclature, was developed by Carl Linaeus —  each species is given a unique, two-word name: a capitalized genus name followed by a lowercase species name.  This way there would be a single standard way of consistently designating every single living thing on the planet, no mater where one might find it.  This made everything so much simpler for everyone .... until multiple names started being used for some (many) living things.

Sometimes, back in the olden days, communication wasn't fast enough or reliable enough to spread the first binomial designation far and wide, so someone else would come up with a different name for something that had already been named by someone.  Sometimes something was classified as a particular genus, but later reclassified to some different genus, so the name was changed to reflect better knowledge and understanding.  Sometimes something thought to be a single species has been found to actually be two distinct species, other times what was thought to be two species has turned out to only be one species.  Further complications have arisen when the official distinctive descriptions for a genus or species has changed as more has been learned about known examples, often through testing DNA.  Sometimes the species name was in honor of someone special, often the first person to "discover" or classify it, but then it might be realized that someone else should have gotten that honor so the name was updated.  Sometimes the "experts" would disagree about what the name (genus or species) should be and two names would have to compete for acceptance.  There might be some other complicating reasons that I'm not remembering at this moment.  In theory, the binomial naming system was perfect.  In practice, the system quickly got messy.  There are many plants and animals that ended up with multiple "standard" names over time — sometimes two or three, other times maybe half a dozen or so.  There is supposed to be an "ultimate authority" (society or organization or whatever) that is supposed to 'finally' decide on the 'real' and 'correct' name, but even that is a less than perfect system.  So, the more academic texts will list multiple scientific names for various entries, a practice that is necessary for historical references back to prior publications that used the "correct" names of the times that later got "corrected" to "better" names that were officially accepted and approved.

As genetic testing has developed and its use has been greatly expanded, and as thinking about how best to describe and assign evolutionary relationships between various species, there have been various proposals put forth to basically replace the original Linaeus naming system with something that will help better depict the actual evolution of all the species — rather than the observational structural analysis of body parts and function system that the old names reflect.

Living things aren't the only ones with complex and complicated and less than perfect naming systems.  Rocks and minerals also can have different names.  The complication here is that rocks especially, and sometimes minerals, can vary significantly depending upon exactly how they originated, including whether they are igneous, metamorphic or sedimentary, or what the temperature or pressure were and how they changed, or how much water was involved, or how much time transpired.  This can affect characteristics such as color, texture, density, hardness, toughness, cleavage, and exact chemical composition.  Consequently, minerals – which are theoretically defined according to exact chemical compositions, plus variations! – can have local names based on color, patterns, crystal shapes or styles or forms.

There are also local names for rocks or minerals that are essentially the same except for the fact that they were found in different locations with slightly or dramatically different conditions.  Also, rocks and minerals that are commonly used in specific ways and/or are very wide spread and readily available will have more names. Although there are charts that are used to help classify and name rocks, there are different charts for different locations and different purposes.  Finally, rocks don't have "official" names as much as they do have local names, although the local names are based on "official" names.  Got that!?  It's a great example of the more you know the more you don't know – unless you really know, based on the particular situation.

Oh, and rocks that are used architecturally or industrially typically have very different names in their industry use from what a geologist would call them.  In fact, rocks used for buildings, counter tops or grave markers are very often knowingly given "incorrect" names.  For one local example, "black granite" is quarried just south of Ely along Hwy. #1 but it is actually a gabbroic rock, mostly anorthosite, which is chemically and geologically far from being any sort of granitic rock, yet it is marketed as "black granite."

Congratulations and thanks if you managed to wade through all of that.

Carl Karasti

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elyfieldnaturalists/05c08c50-5c25-4189-9562-d569e93faeb0%40ncsu.edu.

[Don Brown]

 Hey Karl, 

Thanks for the interesting lesson in taxonomy. It seems to me common names are quite useful often as a descriptive shorthand. After all, who would ever remember (or want to)  to say “look at that beautiful Helianthus annuus.”  And a movie titled Panthera leo King  might not have as much appeal. But i am all in favor of reviving latin albeit for different reasons. Carry on!!

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[Roger Powell]

Dear Naturalists,

Beware!  This e-mail came to be pretty long.

Don's contribution to this discussion, added to Carl's, got me to thinking a bit more about scientific names.  For people who study critters and plants in the field, the scientific names often become common names.  Around our house, we never say "southern red-backed voles" but, instead, say "Clethrionomys".  We have 2 vole species here in northern Minnesota, the other being meadow voles, which are in the gen us Microtus.  So, just to say "vole" can be confusing.  I did some research while at the University of Illinois and we had both meadow voles (Microtus pennsylvanicus) and prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster) on our study site.  We called them "pensies" and "ochies".

Consie & I are more likely to say "Peromyscus" than "deer mouse".

We do, nonetheless, use common names for most mammals.  You will not hear us say "I saw an Odocoileus out the dining room window this morning" (a deer); or that "I hiked across a Castor dam" (beaver).  For some critters, however, the scientific name just becomes comfortable.

As Carl noted, scientific names are stable and generally do not change.  But they do change sometimes and the changes can seem arbitrary.  Scientific names become updated at times, leading to what appears to be a change.  Scientific names for animals are governed by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, the mate to the International Commission on Botanical Nomenclature.  Very specific rules govern scientific names.  These Commissions do not go looking for work but do make decisions when called to do so.  Generally, taxonomists with extensive backgrounds solve problems with scientific names.  One rule is that the first name assigned to a species in a published document becomes the permanent name (unless another rule comes into play).  For example, if the scientific name used for a species turns out not to have been the first one assigned and published, then that real first name becomes that scientific name that everyone uses.  That may appear to be a change but it is actually just an update.

If new information shows that the regularly used name was assigned in error, usually due to learning new information, a scientific name can change..

For example, we have 3 species of weasels here in Minnesota, with common names least weasel, short-tailed weasel and long-tailed weasel.  They all look very much alike.  Two of the 3 species have had changes to their scientific names in recent years due to new information being learned.  For a century, our short-tailed weasels were thought to be of the same species as what are called "stoats" in England and Eurasia.  Stoats have the scientific name Mustela erminea.  Recent research looking at DNA, however, has documented that our North American short-tails are distinct from Eurasian stoats.  Our short-tails now have the scientific name Mustela richardsonii.

For as long as short-tails were Mustela erminea, long-tailed weasels were Mustela frenata.  Recent research, again with DNA, has shown that long-tails and short-tails, despite how similar they look, are actually not all that closely related evolutionarily, at least for both being "weasels".  We now know that long-tails' closest relatives are minks and weasels of 2 species found only in South America.  The ancestor to these 4 species (long-tails, minks, the 2 S Am species) arrived in North America independently of short-tails and leasts and then, over millions of years, split into the 4 present species.  These 4 species are now all put in the genus Neogale and no longer in the genus Mustela.  Given what we know now (and we keep learning new things), short-tails are more closely related to black-footed ferrets than to long-tails.

The point is: specific rules exist for scientific names and scientific names change only when the rules dictate that a change is necessary.  The changes are always logical, though the general public often does not have the information needed to understand the logic.  Thus, scientific names may appear to change willy-nilly though they actually do not.

And that is probably more than any of you wanted to learn about scientific names . . . but my fingers just got going.

    peace , , , , , ,

        rog . . . . . .

Roger A Powell
Department of Applied Ecology
North Carolina State University
PO Box 918, Ely, Minnesota 55731

tel. - 218-235-8808
https://cals.ncsu.edu/applied-ecology/people/rpowell-2/

   Husk at leve
      mens du gør det.
   Husk at elske
      mens du tør det.
              Piet Hein