Effects of landscape type and extensive management on use of motorway roadsides by small mammals

• Published in: Canadian Journal of Zoology
• Main Authors: Meunier, Francis D, Corbin, Johanna, Verheyden, Christophe, Jouventin, Pierre
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Canadian Science Publishing 1999
• Subjects: Animal Science and Zoology; Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics; Common vole; Microtus arvalis
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/z98-203; http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/pdf/10.1139/z98-203

We compared the relative abundances of small mammals along extensively managed motorway roadsides (with a narrow mown strip adjacent to the roadway) in three distinct landscapes (garrigue, pine plantation, and intensive farmland), to evaluate the relative effects of management and landscape traversed on roadside small-mammal populations. In each landscape, the landscape matrix (adjacent habitats), the mown strip, and the intervening unmown strip of roadside were sampled using snap traps. The roadside communities differed from those of landscape matrices, both in the relative abundances of individual species and in the proportion of each species captured. Species richness was greater on roadsides than in cropland and pine plantations, but there was no difference in the garrigue landscape. However, this greater richness was due to species that were rarely caught. The three dominant species (93.7% of captures), greater white-toothed shrew (Crocidura russula), wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus), and common vole (Microtus arvalis), were generally more abundant on roadsides than in the landscape matrices, especially in the unmown strip in the case of the first two species. Voles showed seasonal variation, being more abundant in mown strips at the population peak. The ecotone attributes of extensively managed motorway roadsides seem to be favourable to most small-mammal species, regardless of the landscape matrix.