Monitoring of small mammals populations by the pellet method

• Main Author: Sergey Zaika
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. National Museum of Natural History 2010-12-01
• Series: Праці Теріологічної школи
• Subjects: monitoring; birds-of-prey; pellets; fauna; small mammals; owls
• Online Access: http://terioshkola.org.ua/library/pts10-species/pts10-13-zaika-pellets-monitoring.pdf

The present paper summarizes accumulated information on pellet method exploitation in the theriological surveys and also shows a possibility of employment this method in monitoring of small mammals populations. It is demonstrated that data obtained by the pellet method is more informative with respect to rarity objects, but the composition of majority of small mammals species in pellets is considerably differ from nature communities one owing to owls diet selectivity. The basic factors of such selectivity on interspecific and intraspecific level are reported. The last one allows to conduct biomonitoring of populations of separate micromammals species. This paper emphasizes on necessity to create common database on owls diet, based on pellets contain analysis for conducting monitoring of small mammals on the territory of Ukraine.