Southern Bog Lemming (Synaptomys cooperi)

County List:

Rule:

Forested or Mixed Forested/Nonforested Landscapes

1st alternative:
      (Assorted Hardwoods (Regen))
      or (Northern Hardwoods (Regen))
      or (Spruce/Fir (Regen))
      or (Mixed Northern Hardwoods (Regen))
      or (Mixed Upland Hardwoods (Regen))
      or (Any Lowland Conifer (Regen))
      or (Any Lowland Mixed (Regen))
      or Grass
      or Upland Brush
      or Savanna      
      or Fields/Pasture
      or Sedge Meadow
      or Bog
      or Treed Bog

2nd alternative:
      (Assorted Hardwoods (Sm Saw or Lg Saw or Uneven))
      or (Northern Hardwoods (Sm Saw or Lg Saw or Uneven))
      or (Conifer Plantations (Lg Saw))
      or (Mixed Northern Hardwoods (Sm Saw or Lg Saw or Uneven))
      or (Mixed Pine (Sm Saw or Lg Saw or Uneven))
      or (Mixed Upland Hardwoods (Sm Saw or Lg Saw or Uneven))
      or (Swamp Hardwoods (Sm Saw or Lg Saw or Uneven))
      or (Bottomland Hardwoods (Sm Saw or Lg Saw or Uneven))
      or (Any Lowland Conifer (Sm Saw or Lg Saw or Uneven))
      or (Any Lowland Mixed (Sm Saw or Lg Saw or Uneven))
   adjacent to:
      Grass

3rd alternative:
      (Assorted Hardwoods (Sm Saw or Lg Saw or Uneven))
      or (Northern Hardwoods (Sm Saw or Lg Saw or Uneven))
      or (Conifer Plantations (Sm Saw or Lg Saw))
      or (Mixed Northern Hardwoods (Sm Saw or Lg Saw or Uneven))
      or (Mixed Pine (Sm Saw or Lg Saw or Uneven))
      or (Mixed Upland Hardwoods (Sm Saw or Lg Saw or Uneven))
      or (Swamp Hardwoods (Sm Saw or Lg Saw or Uneven))
      or (Bottomland Hardwoods (Sm Saw or Lg Saw or Uneven))
      or (Any Lowland Conifer (Sm Saw or Lg Saw or Uneven))
      or (Any Lowland Mixed (Sm Saw or Lg Saw or Uneven))
   containing:
      Stand/Gap Openings

Habitat List:

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Literature:

This species occupies a variety of habitats, including old fields, clear-cuts, shrubby locations, and upland woods. It also frequents wet, forested sites dominated by spruce, cedar, or tamarack, as well as more open sphagnum bogs. This rodent commonly lives in habitats that seem marginal for the more aggressive meadow vole, and competition between the two may help explain the spotty distribution of the southern bog lemming.

In the summer, a bog lemming usually hides the nest in a grassy tangle or under a convenient log or stump, but its winter home most often is in an underground tunnel.

This docile rodent feeds heavily on succulent monocots. Bromegrass, blue grass, rushes, and sedges are common dietary items that occur along bog lemming runways. This species also eats moss, fungi, roots, bark, and such fruits as huckleberry and blueberry. Although primarily herbivorous, bog lemmings occasionally prey on beetles, snails, and other invertebrates.

Habitat: Uses a variety of habitat including marshes, open meadows and orchards, moist deciduous and mixed forests. Favors sphagnum bogs and deciduous woodlands with a thick layer of loose duff. Uses clearcuts and other small forest openings with adequate groundcover.

Special Habitat Requirements: Moist soils.

Habitat Preferences: The southern bog lemming contrary to its name, does not inhabit only bogs and other damp areas but also dry and well-drained uplands covered with grass or forests. Its rather discontinuous distribution and appearance in a variety of open and forested habitats have perplexed naturalists; however, an improved knowledge of pronounced population fluctuations in this species is now providing some basis for many of the conclusions drawn by the often brief and casual field observations in the past. Southern bog lemmings have been trapped, for example, in recent clearcuts of northern deciduous and coniferous forests West Virginia; in wet, mixed forest in Minnesota; in dense upland hardwoods in Wisconsin; in dry, lush ground cover of unmown bluegrass in Indiana; in habitats containing green succulent monocotyledonous plants, primarily sedges and grasses, in New Jersey; in sphagnum-sedge bog in Quebec; on hillside meadows overgrown with blackberry vines and matted crabgrass in Ohio; in heavy beech-hemlock woods in New York; in abandoned fields dominated by brome grass and invaded to varying degrees by woody vegetation in Kansas.

In Michigan, the southern bog lemming demonstrates its broad tolerance of a wide variety of land types, including intermediate non-woody plant stages in ecological successions. Michigan habitats include blue-grass association in Livingston County; tall sedge, black spruce bog, tamarack bog, and both wet and dry hardwood forest in Ontonagon and Gogebic counties; sphagnum bog under spruce trees in Montmorency County and along Carp Creek in Cheboygan County; grassy areas containing woody plants in Washtenaw County; field-shocked corn in winter in Cass, Clinton, and Washtenaw counties; bog, spruce-blue-berry barrens and hardwood-pine in Baraga and Marquette counties; wet grassy depressions and tamarack swamp in Washtenaw County; cedar swamp in Leelanau County; second-growth hardwoods and conifer forests in Charlevoix County; and a brush pile in Crawford County.

There is abundant evidence that southern bog lemmings in Michigan generally occupy habitats in which shrub or tree growth is intermixed with herbaceous vegetation. Less woody and more grassy sites may be used by the species only when its local populations are high. Comparable studies of small mammals were made by Linduska in 1940-43 and by Shier in 1978-80 at the Rose Lake Wildlife Research Center in Clinton County. In the 1940s, Linduska captured 41 southern bog lemmings in such places as old hedgerows, brushy old fields, winter corn shocks, and open grassy woodlots. Southern bog lemmings were abundant during these years, at least in 1942 and 1943. Repeating this study almost 40 years later during a period when southern bog lemmings were less numerous, Shier failed to obtain this vole in the exact habitats in which they were found by Linduska. Instead, the 20 individuals which she did examine were captured exclusively in pine hedgerows and plantations, where the ground cover consisted of pine needles interspersed with grasses (mostly Bromus). The southern bog lemmings had surface runways in the grassy patches, and underground tunnels where grass was sparse and pine needles blanketed the ground. Shier's results allow for the speculation that the southern bog lemming may have flourished in similar habitat in the uncut, park-like stands of mixed conifers and hardwoods which are reported to have dominated the scene in presettlement days.

Behavior: Nests of the southern bog lemming are located on the ground surface, below ground in side chambers of tunnels, and in hollow logs or stumps.

Before harvest, upland sites supported mature stands of black spruce with a small component of jack pine, paper-birch, and aspen. Dry knolls supported mixed stands of aspen, paper-birch, white spruce, and balsam fir, while wet lowland sites supported stands of black spruce with a small component of white cedar.

Bog lemmings displayed narrow tolerances and were found only in their preferred habitat - moist coniferous forest.

Clearcutting of upland black spruce forest in northern Ontario altered the environment so that clearcut sites were less desirable than uncut sites for red-backed voles, rock voles, and bog lemmings, although the opposite was true for deer mice, meadow voles, heather voles, and least chipmunks.