Nesting behavior of Didelphis aurita: twenty days of continuous recording of a female in a coati nest

Abstract

Choosing the nest site to raise a litter has consequences on female fitness in mammalian species with no male participation in the parental care. We accidentally video recorded a coati's nest appropriation by a female opossum Didelphis aurita, at Parque Ecológico do Tietê, State of São Paulo, Brazil. For 29 days, from December 22, 2011, to January 19th, 2012, the activity of the female was video recorded 24h/day with a camera trap installed close to the nest. At her first appearance, she had infants in her pouch. After taking leaves to the nest twice on the first night, she kept a routine of going out after sunset and returning to the nest before dawn, carrying leaves on the tail on seven occasions. During the last days of recording, infants were seen attached to the female's body. Another episode of a female opossum with infants using a nest previously constructed by a coati was registered in 2013. To our knowledge, this is the first continuous description of the daily activity of opossums during the nesting phase.

O espaço subterrâneo do rato-de-espinho Clyomys bishopi: caracterização e previsões possí­veis sobre sua biologia comportamental

“…Tocas escavadas no solo são usadas por espécies de diversos grupos de mamíferos, dentre os quais se notam três padrões distintos entre escavação direta e apropriação (i.e., adoção de sistemas escavados por outras espécies). Há espécies que escavam as tocas que usam, as escavadoras primárias, e que passam a maior parte da vida abrindo e escavando túneis; outras espécies, as modificadoras, apenas alteram tocas escavadas por escavadores primários; e há as que ocupam, ou se apropriam, de tocas abandonadas ou desocupadas, mas não escavam (Kinlaw, 1999;Zielinski, 2015), como os gambás (Monticelli & Gasco, 2018).…”