Prairie voles sit near the eastern edge of their range in Ohio, and the state’s 89 records show it: the monthly pattern is genuinely patchy, with several summer months showing no records at all rather than a smooth curve. That’s less a data gap than a habitat one. This is a grassland specialist that needs open, undisturbed grassy ground, a resource that’s scarce and scattered across a state that’s mostly farmland, suburb, and forest. Where that habitat exists, records cluster tightly around it; where it doesn’t, there’s nothing to record. Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge and Killdeer Plains Wildlife Area are among the few named sites with the right open-field conditions.
Ohio’s own seasonality note for this species is candid about the gap: sightings are confirmed, but the timing of its activity here isn’t well documented, and the scattered record pattern backs that up rather than telling a clean single-peak story. Ohio’s NatureServe rank is SNR, unranked. The prairie vole is native to Ohio, but with the state at the eastern fringe of its distribution, it was likely always a locally patchy species here rather than one every survey turns up.
Full species profile
