摘要
Rodents form a vital component of Free State ecosystems and monitoring them may be a relatively quick andinexpensive method of indicating healthy or unhealthy ecosystem functioning. Using removal trapping, we havestudied rodent seasonal abundance, species richness, Shannon diversity, and evenness of rodents in four habitats inthe Tussen-die-Riviere Nature Reserve, inspected the most successful sampling method for these habitats, andreport on their community structure and how it is related to an Ecological Index (≈ EI value of grassland). Bothspecies richness and Shannon diversity increased significantly with EI value. The indicator species Mastomyscoucha occurred at all plots, but contributed the largest proportion of the total captures (ca. 80%) at the plot withlowest EI value. Other results important for small mammal monitoring and collecting are that trap success andspecies richness was highest in autumn. This study also confirms that four days and nights continuous trapping isessential for the effective sampling of rodent communities in Free State grasslands. Our results partially supportexpectations that the number of specialist species increases with succession, M. coucha dominance acts as anindicator of habitat disturbance, rodent species richness conforms to Tilman’s hump-shaped curve model, and addsto a baseline of diversity indices in a variety of grassland habitats.
