Northern Limits of the Southeastern Shrew, Sorex 



longirostris Bachman (Insectivora: Soricidae), on the 



Atlantic Coast of the United States 



John F. Pagels and Carol S. Jones 



Department of Biology, 



Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia 23284 



AND 



Charles O. Handley, Jr. 



Division of Mammals, 



U. S. National Museum of Natural History, 



Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. 20560 



ABSTRACT. — Records of captures of 61 specimens of the southeast- 

 ern shrew, Sorex longirostris longirostris Bachman, were obtained for 

 37 localities in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia. 

 Twenty-four localities are in the Piedmont, eleven in the Coastal Plain, 

 and two in the Ridge and Valley Province. Shrews were taken at eleva- 

 tions averaging about 91 m (300 ft.), and ranging from near sealevel to 

 366 m (1200 ft.). Capture records indicate a wide choice of habitats, 

 from old-fields to upland hardwood forests, but nearly all can be 

 construed as disturbed. Japanese honeysuckle or other plants that pro- 

 vide dense ground cover are important features of most habitats of the 

 southeastern shrew. 



INTRODUCTION 



Knowledge of distribution, natural history, and systematic relation- 

 ships of shrews of the Middle Atlantic states has increased rapidly in 

 recent years. For example, the rock shrew, Sorex dispar Batchelder, 

 only recently has been found in Maryland (Mansueti and Flyger 1952). 

 In Virginia, the rock shrew and water shrew, Sorex palustris Richard- 

 son, were added to the State's list even more recently (Handley 1956, 

 and Pagels and Tate 1976, respectively). The Dismal Swamp short- 

 tailed shrew, which was in the past accorded the rank of a species, now 

 is considered to be a subspecies, Blarina brevicauda telmalestes Mer- 

 riam (Handley 1979). The southern short-tailed shrew, formerly thought 

 to be a smaller subspecies of B. brevicauda, now is regarded as a spe- 

 cies, Blarina carolinensis Bachman (Genoways and Choate 1972; Tate et 

 al. 1980). The pygmy shrew, Sorex hoyi Baird (formerly Microsorex 

 hoyi, but see Diersing 1980), long known from only two sites in Virginia 

 (Handley and Patton 1947), since 1950 has been collected at a montane 

 locality and at several Piedmont and Coastal Plain locations in the 

 State (Handley et al. 1980). 



Brimleyana No. 8:51-59. December 1982 51 



