Ship rats and island reptiles: patterns of co-existence in the Mediterranean
BACKGROUND: The western Mediterranean archipelagos have a rich endemic fauna, which includes five species of reptiles. Most of these archipelagos were colonized since early historic times by anthropochoric fauna, such as ship rats (Rattus rattus). Here, I evaluated the influence of ship rats on the...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:7085892 2023-05-15T18:04:52+02:00 Ship rats and island reptiles: patterns of co-existence in the Mediterranean Escoriza, Daniel 2020-03-19 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7085892/ https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8821 en eng PeerJ Inc. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7085892/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8821 ©2020 Escoriza https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. CC-BY Biodiversity Text 2020 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8821 2020-03-29T01:41:35Z BACKGROUND: The western Mediterranean archipelagos have a rich endemic fauna, which includes five species of reptiles. Most of these archipelagos were colonized since early historic times by anthropochoric fauna, such as ship rats (Rattus rattus). Here, I evaluated the influence of ship rats on the occurrence of island reptiles, including non-endemic species. METHODOLOGY: I analysed a presence-absence database encompassing 159 islands (Balearic Islands, Provence Islands, Corso-Sardinian Islands, Tuscan Archipelago, and Galite) using Bayesian-regularized logistic regression. RESULTS: The analysis indicated that ship rats do not influence the occurrence of endemic island reptiles, even on small islands. Moreover, Rattus rattus co-occurred positively with two species of non-endemic reptiles, including a nocturnal gecko, a guild considered particularly vulnerable to predation by rats. Overall, the analyses showed a very different pattern than that documented in other regions of the globe, possibly attributable to a long history of coexistence. Text Rattus rattus PubMed Central (PMC) PeerJ 8 e8821 |
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Biodiversity |
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Biodiversity Escoriza, Daniel Ship rats and island reptiles: patterns of co-existence in the Mediterranean |
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Biodiversity |
description |
BACKGROUND: The western Mediterranean archipelagos have a rich endemic fauna, which includes five species of reptiles. Most of these archipelagos were colonized since early historic times by anthropochoric fauna, such as ship rats (Rattus rattus). Here, I evaluated the influence of ship rats on the occurrence of island reptiles, including non-endemic species. METHODOLOGY: I analysed a presence-absence database encompassing 159 islands (Balearic Islands, Provence Islands, Corso-Sardinian Islands, Tuscan Archipelago, and Galite) using Bayesian-regularized logistic regression. RESULTS: The analysis indicated that ship rats do not influence the occurrence of endemic island reptiles, even on small islands. Moreover, Rattus rattus co-occurred positively with two species of non-endemic reptiles, including a nocturnal gecko, a guild considered particularly vulnerable to predation by rats. Overall, the analyses showed a very different pattern than that documented in other regions of the globe, possibly attributable to a long history of coexistence. |
format |
Text |
author |
Escoriza, Daniel |
author_facet |
Escoriza, Daniel |
author_sort |
Escoriza, Daniel |
title |
Ship rats and island reptiles: patterns of co-existence in the Mediterranean |
title_short |
Ship rats and island reptiles: patterns of co-existence in the Mediterranean |
title_full |
Ship rats and island reptiles: patterns of co-existence in the Mediterranean |
title_fullStr |
Ship rats and island reptiles: patterns of co-existence in the Mediterranean |
title_full_unstemmed |
Ship rats and island reptiles: patterns of co-existence in the Mediterranean |
title_sort |
ship rats and island reptiles: patterns of co-existence in the mediterranean |
publisher |
PeerJ Inc. |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7085892/ https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8821 |
genre |
Rattus rattus |
genre_facet |
Rattus rattus |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7085892/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8821 |
op_rights |
©2020 Escoriza https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. |
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CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8821 |
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PeerJ |
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8 |
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e8821 |
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