| Summary: | Department of Zoological Sciences, 140p. 2003, SB 994.R6O3 Murid rodents are an important pest group in eastern African agriculture by causing crop depredation, and as reservoirs for epizoonotic infections. On a global scale, they also pose some of the most complex management problems leading to huge capital expenditures towards their control. Gaps in our knowledge of how to plan for effective control need ecological theory and field data to provide vital ingredients in the design of sustainable management strategies. Efforts to obtain such information have gathered momentum especially in southeast Asia and Tanzania. Relatively less work has been done in Kenya and information lacking includes long-term ecological studies of pest species in cropping systems. This study, therefore, aimed at providing information towards bridging this gap. In order to achieve the above-mentioned goal, I set to investigate the demographic patterns and habitat use by murid rodents in maize cropping systems between May 2000 and December 2001. Capture Mark Recapture (CMR) technique was used on four permanent one-ha square grids established along an altitudinal gradient. Rodents were captured using Sherman's live traps placed at 10m spacing between trapping stations. Traps were baited with fried coconut cubes mixed with peanut butter and Elianto cooking oil. A total of 1240 captures including recaptures of 837 individuals were made of rodents and shrews in 20,100 trap nights. Fifty-three animals were found dead in the traps during handling. The rodents included six murid rat species (Aethomys cf kaiseri Noack 1887, Arvicanthis cf neumanni 1822, Lemniscomys striatus Linnaeus 1758, Mastomys cf erythroleucus Smith 1834, Rattus rattus and Mus minutoides Smith 1834) and a cricetid (Tatera cf. robusta Cretzschmar 1830) while the shrews were all soricids (Crocidura species). Mastomys was the dominant species within and across grids, accounting for 71.0 % of all captures. Other common rodents were Arvicanthis (14.1 %) and Mus (8.0 %). The ...
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