Small mammals in Araucaria rain forest: linking vegetal components and the arthropod fauna with rodent community

Abstract

The abundance of small mammal species is particularly influenced by vegetation and arthropods. Studies that focus on understanding these correlations between small mammals, habitat features and resource availability will provide insights into the ecological processes that drive mammal communities. We investigated the correlations of the abundance of terrestrial arthropod taxa and of the abundance of trees and treelets with the composition of a small mammal community in a patch of Araucaria rain forest in southern Brazil. We established 25 stratified plots in the sampling grid of small mammals and sampled the abundances of trees, treelets and the ground arthropods. Relatively poor small mammal richness, when compared with other formations of Atlantic forest, was registered for this area of Araucaria forest, but consistent with findings for other small mammal communities in the Araucaria forest of southern Brazil. The abundance of small mammal species of the local community was associated with the abundance of trees of two species and with the abundance of treelets of four species. Regarding the arthropods, the abundance of rodents was associated only with the abundance of coleopterans. Thus, these resources may be a mechanism allowing their coexistence in the same area.

Keywords:

• Cricetidae
• Neotropical region
• small mammal community
• species richness

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the Brazilian Institute for Environmental Resources (IBAMA), especially to Remi Weirich, for authorization and giving all the facilities to develop the fieldwork. We thank all our colleagues from the MuRAU for their support in fieldwork; Professor Jean Carlos Budke, who helped in the botanical identifications; CNPq, Capes and FAPERGS, who gave financial support to TROF and LUH; and CNPq/Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology, for granting a scholarship to the first and second authors. We thank Anne Zillikens, Thomas Lacher, Jr. and one anonymous reviewer for all the comments and suggestions which greatly improved the manuscript.