Familiarity with its habitat is vital for any individual, enabling it to meet its requirements for food, shelter, and reproduction. The questions of how optimal habitat is found and is shared with a competitor species remain problematic for rodents. Study of the habitat preferences and selection of 2 murinae from the south of France, the short-tailed mouse Mus spretus and the wood mouse Apodemus sylvaticus, found a large overlap in habitat and only small differences in preferences. Although both species live in almost every garrigue habitat and are more abundant in transitory humandisturbed areas, A. sylvaticus was higher in abundance in holm oak coppices, while M. spretus was more abundant in low scrubland with shrub oaks or thorny broom thickets. The high level of habitat overlap resulted in many co-occurrences, with A. sylvaticus always more abundant than the short-tailed mouse. When wood mice were experimentally introduced as an attractor in a low-suitability habitat, they surprisingly attracted many short-tailed mice, but fewer wood mice than were attracted by bait-only traps. Encounters arranged in situ between the attractor and the attracted mice showed predominantly amicable or neutral behaviours and very few instances of agonistic behaviour. We hypothesize that the demographic dominance of wood mice and the abundance of resources during a large part of the year resulted in a non-competitive cohabitation, which may be beneficial to short-tailed mice using wood mice cues as "public information" indicating resource abundance. Keywords: habitat overlap, habitat preference, heterospecific attraction, interspecific interactions, murinae.Résumé : La connaissance d'un habitat donné comblant les besoins en abri, nourriture et reproduction est indispensable pour tout individu. Les questions de comment détecter un habitat optimal et comment le partager avec une espèce compétitrice restent problématiques pour les rongeurs. La préférence et la sélection d'habitats de 2 murinés du sud de la France, la souris à queue courte Mus spretus et le mulot sylvestre Apodemus sylvaticus, montrent un large chevauchement d'habitats et des préférences assez similaires. Bien que les deux espèces occupent presque tous les habitats et soient plus abondantes dans une zone anthropisée transitoire, A. sylvaticus se retrouve préférentiellement dans les taillis de chêne vert et M. spretus dans les garrigues basses à chêne kermès ou à genêt scorpion. Une telle situation conduit à de nombreux cas de syntopie entre les 2 espèces où A. sylvaticus est presque toujours plus abondant que M. spretus. Des mulots allochtones utilisés expérimentalement comme élément attracteur dans un habitat défavorable ont attiré de façon inattendue de nombreuses souris à queue courte, mais moins de mulots que les pièges avec appât seuls. Des rencontres dyadiques réalisées in situ entre les mulots attracteurs et les souris attirées ont montré un comportement amical ou neutre avec très peu de comportements agonistiques. Nous concluons que la suprématie démographique...
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.