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ARS Home » Plains Area » Las Cruces, New Mexico » Range Management Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #221827
Title: Complexity in rodent community responses to grassland-shrubland transitions

Author
item CAMPANELLA, ANDREA - NEW MEXICO STATE UNIV
item Bestelmeyer, Brandon
item ROEMER, GARY - NEW MEXICO STATE UNIV
item Peters, Debra

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/1/2007
Publication Date: 6/6/2007
Citation: Campanella, A., Bestelmeyer, B.T., Roemer, G., Peters, D.C. 2007. Complexity in rodent community responses to grassland-shrubland transitions [abstract]. 87th Annual Meeting American Society of Mammalogists, June 6-8, 2007, Albuquerque, New Mexico. p. 89.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: It is believed that the abundance and diversity of Chihuahuan Desert rodents increases with shrub encroachment accompanying desertification although grassland specialist species decline with loss of perennial grasses. It has been reported, however, that a suite of biotic-abiotic interactions may influence rodent population responses to spatial variation in habitat in complex ways, mediating the general habitat/abundance relationship. The consistency of rodent responses to shrub encroachment across a landscape and over time has not been examined in the past and is the objective of this study. Between 2002 and 2006 we monitored rodent populations on five grassland-shrubland ecotone sites in the Jornada Basin (NM, USA). The ecotones are within the same vegetation types and soils (Bouteloua eriopoda and Prosopis glandulosa on coarse loamy Argids), but they are dynamic (with shrubs expanding into grasslands over the last century) and varied in total shrub and grass abundance depending on mesoclimate and disturbance history. We also monitored 23 additional grids distributed across an area of 200 square kilometers and ranging from healthy grasslands to dense mesquite dunes. Precipitation at all sites was recorded. We tested the hypothesis that rodent richness, biomass, and density/abundance were highest in shrub-dominated portions of replicate grassland-shrubland ecotones and across grassland-shrubland transitions. We found that overall rodent richness, biomass and abundance were highly variable across the landscape and responses to shrub cover and precipitation were not always linear across years. Perennial grass cover and bare ground cover did not show significant effects on rodent populations. We conclude that absolute differences in shrub cover across the landscape are more important than relative differences in vegetation structure (i.e. shrub cover) within an ecotone for aggregate measures of rodent communities.