Regular articles
Special Issues
Caribbean Naturalist
CANA Home
Range and Scope
Board of Editors
Staff
Editorial Workflow
Publication Charges
Subscriptions
Other EH Journals
Northeastern Naturalist
Southeastern Naturalist
Neotropical Naturalist
Urban Naturalist
Prairie Naturalist
Journal of North American Bat
Research
Eastern Paleontologist
Journal of the North Atlantic
eBio
First Record of Albinism in the Nine-banded Armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus)
Joshua B. LaPergola*
*Department of Biology, Villanova University, Villanova, PA 19085, USA. Current address - Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
Caribbean Naturalist, No. 64 (2019)
Abstract
I observed a group of 4 albino Dasypus novemcinctus (Nine-banded Armadillo) foraging in close proximity to one another on Isla Cozumel, México, in July 2009. To my knowledge, this observation represents the first directly documented account of albinism in the species and only the fourth incidence of albinism in the Xenarthra. Given this armadillo’s mode of reproduction (i.e., birthing identical quadruplets) and the relative rarity of xenarthran albinism, I hypothesize that this group comprised close kin (perhaps clonal siblings) and encourage further work on the Cozumel population of Nine-banded Armadillos and in the species more generally.
Download Full-text pdf (Accessible only to subscribers. To subscribe click here.)