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Featured photo of the week

November 26, 2014

University Relations

A northern red-backed vole (Myodes rutilus) climbs down an aspen tree trunk headfirst. This behavior, as well as the ability to rotate hind feet backward to support body weight, is normally found in mammals adapted to climbing and has not been documented previously in voles. Former UAF undergraduate Jon Nations, now a technician at the UA Museum of the North, was awarded several grants from the Undergraduate Research and Scholarly Activities program to study climbing behavior in this species and has submitted a paper to the Journal of Mammalogy describing his results. A northern red-backed vole (Myodes rutilus) climbs down an aspen tree trunk headfirst. This behavior, as well as the ability to rotate hind feet backward to support body weight, is normally found in mammals adapted to climbing and has not been documented previously in voles. Former UAF undergraduate Jon Nations, now a technician at the UA Museum of the North, was awarded several grants from the Undergraduate Research and Scholarly Activities program to study climbing behavior in this species and has submitted a paper to the Journal of Mammalogy describing his results.