Microhabitat Selection in Two Species of Heteromyid Rodents

Authors

Cliff A. Lemen, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Michael L. Rosenzweig, University of Arizona

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

April 1978

Comments

Published in Oecologia (Berlin) 33 (1978), pp. 127–135. Copyright © by Springer-Verlag 1978. Used by permission. http://springerlink.metapress.com/content/1432-1939/

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to determine the microhabitat preferences of two heteromyid rodents, Dipodomys ordi and Perognathus flavus. This experiment used marked seeds and the atomic absorption spectrophotometer in order to study the environment as a mosaic of microhabitats. The results of our analysis indicate that these two heteromyids are microhabitat selectors. The preferences of the rodents are, D. ordi: grass habitat 0.0%, near grass habitat 22.5%, open habitat 77.4%, and P. flavus: grass habitat 46.2%, near grass habitat 32.2%, open habitat 21.4%. The overlap between the two species is only 0.43.