Gunnison's prairie dogs have yellowish-buff coats and build connected burrow colonies in grasslands and high-desert country. They warn one another of danger with calls.
Yellowish-buff fur is mixed with dark hairs, helping the animal blend into its surroundings.
Gunnison’s prairie dogs are social squirrels of grasslands and shrublands in the American Southwest. Researchers analysed long-term records of 2,508 animals from Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona, collected between 1989 and 1995. They compared survival by age, sex, and reproductive status using repeated observations of marked animals.
Estimated survival was 0.461 for juveniles, 0.482 for adults, and 0.288 for yearlings. Females had higher apparent survival than males. In a population model, reproductive output by yearling females was the strongest potential driver of population growth. The long-running records reveal how survival and reproduction differ across age groups.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
In the Petrified Forest National Park dataset, yearlings had lower estimated survival than juveniles and adults, while female survival was higher than male survival. A population model identified yearling reproductive output as the strongest potential influence on population growth.