Fly-by-night operation

Reprinted by permission from "The Mercury"

A mysterious mammal may be moving further into the Sunflower State.

A pair of Kansas State University researchers are beginning work on a three-year project to learn more about the prevalence of the southern flying squirrel in Kansas. One thing that the researchers would be excited to discover is a clue about why this small mammal glows hot pink under ultraviolet light.

"It's a strange phenomenon," associate professor Adam Ahlers said.

Ahlers grew up in Clearwater and graduated from Clearwater Hig in 1995.

He said, "No one is really for sure why that happens yet. I think it was just discovered, in museum specimens at first. Then they captured some live specimens to see, and sure enough, under those light conditions, they glow hot pink. There's a number of different hypotheses about why that happens."

Ahlers is a mammologist who studies wildlife populations and distribution. His colleague, assistant biology professor Andrew Hope, is an evolutionary biologist who is researching the impacts of climate change on wildlife. Both have been at K-State for about eight years, and both think the southern flying squirrel population in Kansas is bigger than what is known.

"Kansas is right on the edge of this squirrel's western distribution," Ahlers said. "Especially eastern Kansas, where there's more hardwood forests."

Through their three-year project funded by the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, Ahlers and Hope aim to learn more about how far the southern flying squirrel has spread into Kansas, as well as more about the animal itself.

"There are squirrels all over Kansas," Hope said. "But there's lots of different kinds of squirrels. As soon as you start picking up hardwood forests, then you start seeing tree squirrels. One of our questions is, 'What extent of forest do you need to start getting flying squirrels?' Are they just where there's one or two trees, or where there's a more solid forest built up?"

Hope said he and Ahlers have determined the southern flying squirrel's habitat now includes eastern Kansas, starting around the Manhattan area and stretching south past Wichita, then east over to the border with Missouri. The squirrel's typical range spans the eastern half of the U.S., from the Canadian border south to the Gulf of Mexico. The mammal is also found in some portions of Central America. Ahlers said when he first moved to Manhattan, he heard people talking about seeing flying squirrels up by Tuttle Creek Lake, but those reports were never confirmed.

The southern flying squirrel cannot actually fly, according to Hope and Ahlers. The mammal has the ability to glide from tree to tree using a special membrane called a patagium. The patagium is made of cartilage and extends between the animal's front and back feet, allowing it to glide through the air. Gliding paths of up to 20 feet have been recorded. The southern flying squirrel is an omnivore, eating mostly tree nuts, berries, insects and sometimes bird eggs. In urban areas, the mammal may feast from backyard bird feeders. The southern flying squirrel is the smallest squirrel species in North America; Hope said they're about the size of a chipmunk, or no longer than six inches.

Besides being petite, the southern flying squirrel is a nocturnal creature, which makes field research more difficult. Hope said scientists "don't really know" how far the southern flying squirrel's habitat area has expanded or how many squirrels now populate North America.

Ahlers said there've been some anecdotal reports of flying squirrels in the Omaha area, which puts the animals about 150 miles north of where researchers currently think their main region of distribution is. The flying squirrel's main predators include owls, hawks, coyotes and weasels.

Starting this spring, Ahlers said he and Hope will use game cameras as well as live traps placed in trees to hopefully capture southern flying squirrels, both photographically and physically. If a squirrel is captured on camera, then humane live traps will be situated around where the squirrel was documented. Hope said a goal is to capture individual squirrels and "tag" them with a small passive integrated transponder similar to the under-skin implant animal shelters use for pets.

"So, when you recapture them, you have a reader, and it'll tell you, 'This is Individual Bob,' right," Ahlers said. "We can get some information on the population as far as survival and things like that."

Hope said he and Ahlers also will collect extremely small tissue samples from the squirrels they catch and save them for genetic research projects. Ahlers said he and Hope's research will provide baseline data to track and compare the overall health of southern flying squirrel populations in the state. He added that biologists also want to understand how important southern flying squirrels are to an area's biodiversity.

"We've got three years of field work that's going to happen," Ahlers said, "and that will hopefully provide the Department of Wildlife and Parks with enough information to get started implementing some management strategies in those areas."

Hope said this project will also require some public participation. He and Ahlers will be making partnerships with landowners in eastern Kansas to set up their cameras and traps.

Ahlers said the southern flying squirrel is not a threatened or endangered species, but the lack of information on them confirms the importance of their project.

"For me, it's just filling a gap in our knowledge," Hope said. "Kansas is kind of known for its prairies and open habitats, and there's a lot of research here that focuses on maintaining those prairies and the pitfalls of woody encroachment. However, Kansas has some really important hardwood forests that most people don't think about, and eastern Kansas is a really beautiful place that we get to explore. This species really kind of epitomizes the habitats in the eastern half of the state."