By Emily Rosenblum
Geographic Range
Reithrodontomys fulvescens can be found in southeast Arizona, southwest and east Texas, east Oklahoma, southeast Kansas, southwest Missouri, west Arkansas, Louisiana, and west Mississippi (Whitaker, J.O. Jr. 1980, Davis and Schmidly 1994).
Habitat
This mouse occurs mostly in low grassy or weedy areas or along creek bottoms with tangled vines and bushes. In southern areas, R. fulvescens lives in "arid inland valleys where temperatures are high and the soil is sandy or rocky" (Hall and Kelson 1959).
Terrestrial Biomes:
savanna or grassland 
.
Physical Description
(0.63 oz)
This mouse resembles the house mouse but differs in its hairier tail and grooved upper incisors (Nowak 1991). The length of the tail is greater than half of the total body length (Whitaker, Jr. 1980). Ears of R. fulvescens are large. The hair on the upper body is a mixture of reddish brown and black, creating a salt and pepper effect (Hall and Kelson 1959). R. fulvescens has a tail that is much longer than its body and its under parts are white to buff. The adult plumage is brighter than that of the juvenile and adults molt once a year. Females have six mammae. A typical harvest mouse weighs about 18 grams.
Some key physical features:
endothermic ; bilateral symmetry .
Reproduction
Peaks in reproduction for R. fulvescens occur in late spring and early autumn with a breeding season that extends from February all the way through to October. The gestation period is approximately twenty days with an average litter size of about three or four. Each newborn weighs about one gram. By the second week, the young are well-furred and by about nine to twelve days, the eyes are open (Davis and Schmidly 1994). At three weeks, the young leave the nest and by five weeks, they are at full size (Grzimek 1990).
Key reproductive features:
gonochoric/gonochoristic/dioecious (sexes separate); sexual .
Behavior
Perhaps the most fascinating habit of the fulvous harvest mouse is its ability to build large, above-ground "penthouses" in grasses, low shrubs, or small trees (Davis and Schmidly 1994). These may be constructed of the materials in the animal's habitat or may be converted bird's nests. The solid, globe-shaped nest has one or two exits near the bottom end which can be clogged up. Sometimes, R. fulvescens makes use of the burrows of other animals, although it does not make its own. R. fulvescens is nocturnal.
Key behaviors:
motile .
Food Habits
The diet of R. fulvescens mainly consists of seeds, the green shoots of vegetation and some insect larvae. The fulvous harvest mouse seems to enjoy butterfly larvae (Grzimek 1972, Grzimek 1990).
For More Information
Find Reithrodontomys fulvescens information at
Contributors
Emily Rosenblum (author), Southwestern University.
Stephanie Fabritius (editor), Southwestern University.
