Behavioural responses of sympatric rodents to complete pilferage

Huang, Zhiyuan; Wang, Yu; Zhang, Hongmao; Fa-qing, WU; Zhang, Zhibin

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2011.01.018

Cited by 35 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Differentiation in food hoarding strategies among coexisting rodent species has been found in other ecosystems (Price & Mittler, 2003;Lu & Zhang, 2008;Vander Wallet al, 2009;Chang & Zhang, 2011;Huang et al, 2011) and is considered as an adaptation to coexistence (Jenkins & Breck, 1998;Price et al, 2000;Vander Wall, 2000;Leaver & Daly, 2001). In the present study, we found a significant interspecific variation in food hoarding strategies among individuals of all three sympatric rodent species.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 67%

“…Andersson & Krebs (1978) suggested that hoarding behaviors evolve when the caching individual is more likely than any other to gain access to their caches. However, more recent studies have noted that rodents significantly increase the intensity of scatter-hoarding but not larder-hoarding when faced with complete cache loss of scatter-hoarded seeds (Huang et al, 2011, but see Preston & Jacobs, 2001). Only a few studies have delved further and investigated the connected behaviors involved in interspecific differences of pilfering abilities (Leaver & Daly, 2001;Thayer & Vander Wall, 2005).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Seed caching and cache pilferage by three rodent species in a temperate forest in the Xiaoxinganling Mountains

Zhang¹,

Shen²,

Liu³

et al. 2013

Zoological Research

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Although differences in food-hoarding tactics both reflect a behavioral response to cache pilferage among rodent species and may help explain their coexistence, differentiation in cache pilfering abilities among sympatric rodents with different hoarding strategies is seldom addressed. We carried out semi-natural enclosure experiments to investigate seed hoarding tactics among three sympatric rodent species (Tamias sibiricus, Apodemus peninsulae and Clethrionomys rufocanus) and the relationship of their pilfering abilities at the inter-and intraspecific levels. Our results showed that T. sibiricus exhibited a relatively stronger pilfering ability than A. peninsulae and C. rufocanus, as indicated by its higher recovery rate of artificial caches. Meanwhile A. peninsulae showed a medium pilfering ability and C. rufocanus displayed the lowest ability. We also noted that both cache size and cache depth significantly affected cache recovery in all three species. T. sibiricus scatter-hoarded more seeds than it larder-hoarded, A. peninsulae larder-hoarded more than scatter-hoarded, and C. rufocanus acted as a pure larder-hoarder. In T. sibiricus, individuals with lower pilfering abilities tended to scatter hoard seeds, indicating an intraspecific variation in hoarding propensity. Collectively, these results indicated that sympatric rodent species seem to deploy different food hoarding tactics that allow their coexistence in the temperate forests, suggesting a strong connection between hoarding strategy and pilfering ability.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 67%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seed caching and cache pilferage by three rodent species in a temperate forest in the Xiaoxinganling Mountains

Zhang¹,

Shen²,

Liu³

et al. 2013

Zoological Research

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“…First, agoutis might revisit seed caches to monitor rates of seed theft. Previous studies have shown that seed-caching birds and rodents respond to an increase in cache theft rates by increasing their rate of food caching (Vander Wall & Jenkins 2003;Dally et al 2006;Huang et al 2011; but see Dally et al 2006 for alternate responses to cache theft), suggesting that this information is important to hoarders. It is possible that the agoutis in our study surveyed their caches to assess theft risk, which would allow them to recover caches and move them to safer places if necessary (Hirsch et al 2012a, b;Jansen et al 2012), but whether these activities are a response to perceived theft risk is not known.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for cache surveillance by a scatter-hoarding rodent

2013

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“…This was based on previous observations that the majority of oil tea seeds were dispersed within 20 m of their sources (Xiao et al 2004). By following our previous studies Huang et al 2011), seed fates were defined as intact in situ (IIS), eaten in situ (EIS), eaten after being removed (EAR), scatter-hoarded (SH) or missing (M). IIS indicates intact seeds that were not removed by rodents from seed stations.…”

Section: Seeds Tagging and Trackingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does scatter‐hoarding of seeds benefit cache owners or pilferers?

Zhao

Zhang

2017

Integrative Zoology

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The scatter-hoarding behavior of granivorous rodents plays an important role in seed dispersal and seedling regeneration of trees, as well as the evolution of several well-known mutualisms between trees and rodents in forest ecosystems. Because it is difficult to identify seed hoarders and pilferers under field conditions by traditional methods, the full costs incurred and benefits accrued by scatter-hoarding have not been fully evaluated in most systems. By using infrared radiation camera tracking and seed tagging, we investigated the benefits and losses of scatter-hoarded seeds (Camellia oleifera) for 3 sympatric rodent species (Apodemus draco, Niviventer confucianus and Leopoldamys edwardsi) in a subtropical forest of Southwest China during 2013 to 2015. We established the relationships between the rodents and the seeds at the individual level. For each rodent species, we calculated the cache recovery rate of cache owners, as well as conspecific and interspecific pilferage rates. We found that all 3 sympatric rodent species had a cache recovery advantage with rates that far exceeded average pilferage rates over a 30-day tracking period. The smallest species (A. draco) showed the highest rate of scatter-hoarding and the highest recovery advantage compared with the other 2 larger species (N. confucianus and L. edwardsi). Our results suggest that scatter-hoarding benefits cache owners in food competition, supporting the pilferage avoidance hypothesis. Therefore, scatter-hoarding behavior should be favored by natural selection, and plays a significant role in species coexistence of rodent community and in the formation of mutualism between seeds and rodents in forest ecosystems.

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Behavioural responses of sympatric rodents to complete pilferage

Cited by 35 publications

References 37 publications

Seed caching and cache pilferage by three rodent species in a temperate forest in the Xiaoxinganling Mountains

Seed caching and cache pilferage by three rodent species in a temperate forest in the Xiaoxinganling Mountains

Evidence for cache surveillance by a scatter-hoarding rodent

Does scatter‐hoarding of seeds benefit cache owners or pilferers?

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