Crawfish, and in brackish areas blue 

 crabs, are major alligator foods, but 

 alligators are also reported to eat birds, 

 fiddler crabs, fish, insects, nuskrats, 

 nutria, turtles, shrimp, snails, and 

 grasses (Chabreck 1971b). In the Florida 

 Everglades they make "wallows" that are 

 ecologically important for fish during the 

 dry season, but this has not been reported 

 in delta marshes. 



The muskrat 

 the nutria 



Muskrat and nutria . 



(Ondatra zibethicus ) and ..._ ,„ 



(Myocastor coypus ), both herbivores, are 

 the dominant mammals in the delta marshes. 

 The nutria is an introduced species. It 

 is debatable whether muskrats are native 

 or not. O'Neil (1949) stated that 

 although early surveyors' records provide 

 an unconfirmed record of high density 

 muskrat populations in the Barataria- 

 Lafitte area in 1840, fur harvesting did 

 not begin until the first years of the 

 twentieth century, and old-time trappers 

 all claimed that no "rats" were seen much 

 prior to that time. However, Arthur (1931) , 

 in a Louisiana Department of Conservation 

 Bulletin, quotes from the journal of 

 Father Jacques Gravier describing travels 

 down the Mississippi River. He described 

 the dress of the Tunica Indians in a 

 November, 1700 entry: 



"Most of the men have long hair and 

 have no dress but a wretched deerskin. 

 Sometimes they, as well as the women, also 

 have mantels of turkey feathers or muskrat 

 skins well woven and worked." 



(Figure 57), the nutria prefers fresh 

 marsh and swamp forests and often ventures 

 into nearby ricefields to feed. There is 

 some evidence (Lowery 1974) that the 

 present muskrat distribution results from 

 the invasion of fresh marshes by the more 

 robust nutria which displace muskrats into 

 less desirable brackish areas. Although 

 both species often exist side-by-side in 

 the same area, they appear to have very 

 much the same food habits, and it has been 

 noted that when nutria are heavily 

 trapped, the muskrat population can soar 

 (Evans 1970). 



Muskrats often seem to be the primary 

 agents in a 10- to 14-year cycle of marsh 

 growth and collapse (Figure 58). They 



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MUSKRAT 



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Fresh Intermediate Brackish 



About the Houmas Indians he stated: 



"The women wear a fringed skirt, 

 which covers them from the waist to below 

 the knee. When they go out of their 

 cabins they wear a robe of muskrat skins 

 or of turkey feathers." 



These reports seem to indicate that 

 the muskrat has been abundant in the 

 coastal region for at least several 

 hundred years. 



The nutria is a native of South 

 America. It was introduced by the 

 Mcllhennys to Avery Island; it escaped in 

 1938 and rapidly spread throughout the 

 Louisiana coast. Whereas the muskrat is 

 found most abundantly in brackish marshes 



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NUTRIA 



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Fresh Intermediate Brackish 



Pelt production from marsh 

 coastal Louisiana (Palmisano 



65 



