. The Canadian field-naturalist. Natural history. 1997 Notes 639 70° — 60° —. 160° 140° Figure 1. Extreme northern localities for Sorex palustris and type locality for S. alaskanus. Hatched area is distribution reported by Hall (1981; Map 22). The Big Windy Creek record is consistent with Jarrell's (1986) suggestion that this species may be distributed widely in the Yukon River drainage. Intensive trapping in the vicinity of Galena and Ruby (ca. 700 km west of Big Windy Hot Springs) on the western Yukon River, however, has not revealed this species (Johnson et al. 1996*; Quade 1993*; UAM unpub
. The Canadian field-naturalist. Natural history. 1997 Notes 639 70° — 60° —. 160° 140° Figure 1. Extreme northern localities for Sorex palustris and type locality for S. alaskanus. Hatched area is distribution reported by Hall (1981; Map 22). The Big Windy Creek record is consistent with Jarrell's (1986) suggestion that this species may be distributed widely in the Yukon River drainage. Intensive trapping in the vicinity of Galena and Ruby (ca. 700 km west of Big Windy Hot Springs) on the western Yukon River, however, has not revealed this species (Johnson et al. 1996*; Quade 1993*; UAM unpublished data). The Water Shrew is rarely encountered in surveys of small mammals in Alaska and relatively few specimens are available for study. For comparison, there are 4897 specimens, of Alaska species of Sorex archived at UAM; 21 are S. palustris. Excluding island endemics, only the recently discovered tiny shrew, S. minutissimus (Dokuchaev 1994) (four specimens), is represented by fewer specimens at UAM. This lack of material for S. palustris has lim- ited the assessment of geographic variation and hampered studies of the ecology and status of Water Shrew populations in the subarctic. For example, a larger series of specimens representing a wide geo- graphic region would allow evaluation of the status of the Alaska Water Shrew, S. alaskanus (Hutterer 1993). The Alaska Water Shrew is a species of con- servation concern (MacDonald and Cook 1996) that is thought to be closely related (Jackson 1928) or conspecific (Hall 1981; Junge and Hoffmann 1981) with S. palustris. Sorex alaskanus is apparently endemic to Glacier Bay, Alaska, however, it is represented by only three specimens (deposited at U. S. National Museum and Glacier Bay National Park; MacDonald and Cook 1996). Water Shrew populations in surrounding regions have been inventoried poorly. Given this paucity of specimens and unclear taxonomy, additional docu- mentation is needed to determine the distribution and
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