The Michoacan Pocket Gopher is the largest pocket gopher in Mexico. It is a subterranean rodent living exclusively at the highest elevations of a handful of mountains in Michoacán, where it excavates its tunnels in the cool, damp volcanic soil of high-mountain coniferous forest. Like other pocket gophers, the Michoacan Pocket Gopher spends almost its entire life underground. Its lips close behind its incisors, allowing it to gnaw and excavate without swallowing soil. Its distribution is so restricted to the highest and coldest areas of a specific mountain range that it has very little room for movement if climatic conditions at those elevations change. The Michoacan Pocket Gopher is one of the most threatened Mexican pocket gophers. Its situation is worsened by direct competition with another, more common pocket gopher species, which has been gaining ground at the edges of its home range.
The Michoacan Pocket Gopher is a large rodent for a gopher, the largest in Mexico. Its body is cylindrical and compact, adapted for subterranean life. It has dark brown fur, very reduced eyes and ears, and robust fore feet with long claws adapted for digging. It differs from other gophers in the region mainly by its much larger size and its restriction to the highest elevations of the Michoacán mountains.
Living underground, the Michoacan Pocket Gopher leaves no recognisable tracks. Its presence is betrayed by notably large, fan-shaped earth mounds, up to 30-40 cm in diameter, with the tunnel entrance plugged with loose earth from within. Droppings are small and elongated, 1.5-2 cm long, rarely visible as they remain within the tunnel system. The mounds appear in rows that follow the course of the underground tunnels in the volcanic soil of the high altitudes where the Michoacan Pocket Gopher lives. Its presence is also betrayed by plants that suddenly wilt when their roots are cut from below.
High-mountain coniferous forest, on cool, moist volcanic soil, generally above 2700 m altitude. Endemic to the highest elevations of a handful of mountains in Michoacán state, west-central Mexico.
Herbivorous, the Michoacan Pocket Gopher feeds on roots, tubers, and subterranean plant parts, as well as vegetation it drags into its tunnel from the surface near the entrance.
Strictly solitary and territorial outside the breeding season, the Michoacan Pocket Gopher spends almost its entire life underground in its burrow system, like other gophers.
Its populations are considered to be in decline due to severe habitat fragmentation in the high altitudes of Michoacán and competition with another, more widely distributed gopher species that has been occupying the edges of its range.
Deforestation of high-mountain coniferous forest due to logging, competition with another more common gopher species at the edges of its home range, and the altitudinal displacement of necessary cold conditions associated with climate change.
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