Activity of some small mammals in the field

Abstract

A method was developed to record trap captures automatically by means of a dot recorder. According to the grid or trap-line method, only one cable was required in every trap line to indicate and record place and time of each capture in snap traps and live traps in the field. These facilities made it possible to release animals immediately after capture in live traps and to avoid bias to them. Some data on activity patterns of marked individuals and of whole populations of the field vole (Microtus aqrestis L.) and some species associated with it could be gathered. The rate of capture and recapture was increased in linear regression with the weekly quantity of precipitation. The activity of the voles changed from nighttime in summer to daytime in winter. The captures were confined to few hours a.m. and p.m. on clear days in the cold season. Males of the vole were more trap prone than females and older males more than younger stages. The activity shifted from night to daylight with increased weight.

The scent of infanticide risk? Behavioural allocation to current and future reproduction in response to mating opportunity and familiarity with intruder

“…Treatments followed on three consecutive days and at the start of each treatment, cage bedding was placed in the scent wheel half an hour prior to the lights turning off, as bank voles have their peak activity phase during twilight (Baumler 1975; Greenwood 1978; Galsworthy et al 2005). We observed females during a 6-h observation period.…”

Geographic Variation in Daily Temporal Activity Patterns of a Neotropical Marsupial (Gracilinanus agilis)

“…For conducting this study, we relied on digital timers attached to traps to assess the exact capture time, as carried out in several other field studies on small-mammal temporal activity patterns [23, 24, 29]. This method is, however, subject to criticisms mainly because the captured animals remain inside the traps and not only these traps are not available to document activity at latter periods but also the overall number of trappable animals is reduced through the night.…”

“…An alternative for these methods is the revision of the live-traps in distinct hour intervals in each night of sampling [19], but the sampling effort is reduced and several trapping events would be needed to complete all hour intervals of the day. An alternative for a method is the use of timers installed in live-traps [23, 24, 29]. This approach produces accurate time data that the animal entered in the live trap, and any bias resulted from the interference of the researcher is excluded.…”

Overlap of temporal niches among four sympatric species of shrews

“…Such a pattern has been reported 3 times for this species, whereas a nocturnal pattern, with one or two activity peaks, has been found 10 times (Merritt and Vessey 2000). In Germany (Bäumler 1975;trapping), S. araneus was active in all hours, with two slight increases of activity around sunrise and sunset. In the Czech Republic (Jánský and Hanák 1960) and the Netherlands (Voesenek and van Bemmel 1984), S. araneus was nocturnal with a clear peak of activity (between 21:00 and 0:00 and between sunset and 2:00, respectively).…”

“…This species is still poorly investigated in many aspects and its circadian activity was almost unknown so far. The existing data are contradictory: N. anomalus was mainly nocturnal (Buchalczyk 1972) or diurnal (Bäumler 1975), but the sample sizes were very small.…”