Habitat selection of Apodemus chevrieri and Eothenomys miletus in plague foci of Northwest Yunnan Province

MEN Xing-yuan~1, GUO Xian-guo~ 1,2 , DONG Wen-ge~2,QIAN Ti-jun~2 ( ~1College of Medicine, Shantou University, Shantou 515031, Cuangdong, China; ~2College of Preclinical Medicine, Dali Univeristy, Dali 671000, Yunnan, China).

Apodemus chevrieri; Eothenomys miletus; habitat selection; anthropogenic disturbance

This paper investigated the populations of Apodemus chevrieri and Eothenomys miletus in 13 different habitats, including 4 age class protective forests in Cangshan Mountain and Erhai Lake National Reserve, their surrounding farmlands, orchards and scrublands, and 6 age class non-protective forests, with the relationships between the two small mammals and forest habitat factors and the effects of anthropogenic disturbance on the two small mammals populations studied. The results showed that the niche breadth of A. chevrieri and E. miletus was 0.706 and 0.641, respectively, and their niche overlap was 0.831. Regression analysis indicated that most of the two small mammals were on farmland, and least of them were in protective forests. The population densities of the two small mammals in non-protective forests, orchards and scrublands were lower than that on farmlands, but higher than that in protective forests. Anthropogenic disturbance significantly decreased the cover rate, species richness (except for 6-10 years old forests) and density of shrubs, but increased the cover rate and abundance of herbages in bottom layer of forests. Regression model showed that the population densities of the two small mammals were positively correlated with the cover rate of herbages, and negatively affected by the density of shrubs.