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Full-Text Articles in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Patterns Of Transience, Sex Bias, And Body Mass In Open-Habitat Rodent Populations, Stephen Edward Rice Jul 2011

Patterns Of Transience, Sex Bias, And Body Mass In Open-Habitat Rodent Populations, Stephen Edward Rice

Biological Sciences Theses & Dissertations

Rodents are assumed to live their lives in circumscribed (natal) areas with males being more prone to disperse than females and juveniles more prone to disperse than adults. To test these assumptions we examined the initial captures of geographic populations of hispid cotton rat, meadow vole, prairie vole, and marsh rice rat obtained through capture-mark-recapture methods. Capture records were obtained from Kansas and Illinois from long-term studies, and through live-trapping in Chesapeake, Virginia. I evaluated proportions of residents and transients, adults and juveniles, and males and females for significant differences among seasons, years, and geographic locations. The overall body masses …


Reproduction In The Hispid Cotton Rat, Sigmodon-Hispidus Say And Ord (Rodentia: Muridae), In Southeastern Virginia, Robert K. Rose, Michael H. Mitchell Jul 1990

Reproduction In The Hispid Cotton Rat, Sigmodon-Hispidus Say And Ord (Rodentia: Muridae), In Southeastern Virginia, Robert K. Rose, Michael H. Mitchell

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

The hispid cotton rat, Sigmodon hispidus Say and Ord, a species of the southwestern United States that has been moving northward and eastward in this century, was first observed in Virginia in 1940. In this study of the cotton rat in southeastern Virginia, most males were reproductively competent from February through November, embryos were recorded from March through October, and litter sizes were comparable to those from other locations except Kansas. Also unlike the cotton rat in Kansas, animals grew at substantial rates during the winter in Virginia. The hispid cotton rat seems to have adjusted its breeding season in …


Attributes Of Dispersing Meadow Voles In Open-Grid Populations, Raymond D. Dueser, Marcia L. Wilson, Robert K. Rose Jan 1981

Attributes Of Dispersing Meadow Voles In Open-Grid Populations, Raymond D. Dueser, Marcia L. Wilson, Robert K. Rose

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Dispersal was investigated in two open-grid populations of meadow voles, Microtus pennsylvanicus (Ord, 1815) an central Virginia (U.S.A.) from November 1974 to April 1978. "Dispersal" was defined as immigration onto open, occupied population grids. Dispersers were distinguished from residents by weight at first capture. Individuals first captured at weights <30 g were classified as residents; those first captured at >30 g were classified as dispersers. Three independent lines of evidence support the validity of the 30-g criterion for recognizing dispersers in these vole populations. With frequent trapping and high trappability, particularly of young animals, this open-grid method of study offers two advantages in the study of dispersal. First, dispersers identified …