Distribution and population density of the Russian desman

What is it about?

To date according to the registration work, the number of the Russian desman determined actually is 588 individuals in Mordovia. Based on extrapolation, the total desman population in Mordovia is about 1,400 individuals. We may assume that the most of the desman population is concentrated on floodplain lakes and reclamation canals. The highest density of the desman population in Mordovia was recorded in Krasnoslobodsky and Temnikovsky Districts (10.5 and 8.2 burrows per km, respectively). About 400 animals may live on the shore of the rivers Vad, Partsa, Yavas, Vindrey, Nuluy, and Kundybolka. The mean value of density of the desman population on the rivers was 0.9 burrows per km of the coastline, which corresponded to habitat quality class IV (0.5–5 burrows per km). The distribution of habitats across river basins is extremely uneven. The main part of the desman population is restricted to the Moksha basin (more than 1,350 individuals), and in the Alatyr basin (left tributary of the Sura River) just twenty individuals were recorded.

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Photo by Kushagra Kevat on Unsplash

Photo by Kushagra Kevat on Unsplash

Why is it important?

In the material presented in this article, we tried to fill in the missing information on the Russian desman population density in Mordovia, so that there would be no misconception or typing errors in the literature regarding the small number of registration points in the region. These data are important for assessing the entire range of the Russian desman. It is no coincidence that C. Nores et al. (1998) in their work on the Pyrenean desman (Galemys pyrenaicus Geoffroy, E.), whose range is many times smaller than the range of the Russian desman, report that, despite studying for several decades (Stone & Gorman, 1985; Stone, 1987), information on the density of the population of the Pyrenean desman is extremely insufficient. This conclusion is also valid for the Russian desman, where information is collected by researchers for each individual region. According to the results obtained by foreign colleagues, the population density of the Pyrenean desman of 2.8–7.3 individuals per km is comparable to the population density of the Russian desman.

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