Cultivation on grassland ecosystem, as one of the greatest disturbance, is well studied. Grassland cultivation, especially in desert region, often results in habitat fragmentation, and subsequently affects plant and animal communities.Under intensive disturbance, the responses of rodent species with different bionomic strategies to environmental change could play a key role in determining structure of their communities. Few literatures on Chinese western desert have focused on the impacts of cultivation on rodents. A study was conducted from 2006 to 2011at cultivated and non鄄cultivated sites to investigate effect of cultivation on rodent community diversity, community structure with different bionomic strategies, and their population abundance in Alashan, Inner Mongolia, China. We expected that rodents with r strategy will dominate in cultivated site, while K strategists will dominate in non鄄cultivated site. Rodent communities monitoring using live trapping
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