Do Small Mammals have territories?

[Robert S J Smith]

Evening all,

Doing a bit of course work for my college course regarding a small mammal trapping session we done a few weeks back in a college wood and I was wondering if anybody could help me?

I'm currently writing up a section on why our results cannot be 110% accurate on what the population is in this wood and I have to give several reasons why.

I'm happy with what I've got so far but was wondering if small mammals e.g. a Wood Mouse Apodemus sylvaticus hold territories all year or just during the breeding season or not at all? because surely a male wood mouse defending its territory would chase away other wood mice therefore making the population variable.

Really really sorry if this doesn’t make sense,

But thanks anyway,

Regards,

Robert

[Dogghound]

They dont hold territories. They may guard individual nests etc but not areas. The main limiting factors are predation, habitat quality and food supply.

[Robert S J Smith]

Originally Posted by Dogghound

They dont hold territories. They may guard individual nests etc but not areas. The main limiting factors are predation, habitat quality and food supply.

Thanks very much Dogghound

[RoyW]

Originally Posted by Robert S J Smith

I'm currently writing up a section on why our results cannot be 110% accurate on what the population is in this wood and I have to give several reasons why.

Because it's impossible for accuracy to be over 100%

[faz]

agree with both comments

[Dogghound]

Sorry i was quite vague, some small mammals do hold territories such as female field voles. However its unlikely this would limit population size, usually when habitat is good territories simply get smaller, in poor habitat they need to be larger.

[RKB]

They certainly have a home-range, but to what extent they defend it against others of the same or all sexes/ages will depend on whether you can call it a territory.

So if your traps isnt in their home-range then you wont catch them. Also you may not be able to catch all animals using Longworth traps for the simple reason that once you've caught an animal it generally excludes any others from being caught at that spot. Even if you have more traps than animals, it's a passive method in that you're relying on the animals to find and enter the trap, rather than active (you finding them), so you can never be sure you tare catching 100%. The best you can do is a statistical estimate using capture/recapture information (such as the MARK software).