Habitat

     At one point in time the Nicrophorus americanus was spread all over Eastern North America. This includes thirty-five United States and three Canadian Provinces (Bedick et al, 1999)! Over the last few decades, however, the Nicrophorus americanus has steadily been on the decline.  

        

Nicrophorus americanus’s range and population has gone down at an extremely rapid rate (Creighton et al, 1998). It is now ninety percent less in both the range and population. Currently Nicrophorus americanus is only located in six states in the United States. These states are the Southeastern part of South Dakota and Kansas, the central part of Nebraska, the Eastern part of Oklahoma, the Western part of Arkansas, and in Rhode Island. All of these states are on the edges of what used to be the range of the Nicrophorus americanus (Bedick et al 1999). Data shows from within these states the communities are patchy and very localized (Bedick et al 1999) this could be from the need of large carcasses found in deep loose soils like that of the Eastern deciduous forests which have been going through extreme deforestation (Creighton et al, 1998). Nicrophorus americanus spends most of its time in one particular type of habitat and that is the field or meadow (Scott 1998).

           

Image courtesy of Jay Pruett, The Nature Conservancy

Now to learn about Adaptation/Interaction!

 

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