An Experimental Test of Competition among Mice, Chipmunks, and Squirrels in Deciduous Forest Fragments

PLoS One. 2013 Jun 18;8(6):e66798. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0066798. Print 2013.

Abstract

Mixed hardwood forests of the northeast United States support a guild of granivorous/omnivorous rodents including gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis), eastern chipmunks (Tamias striatus), and white-footed mice (Peromyscus leucopus). These species coincide geographically, co-occur locally, and consume similar food resources. Despite their idiosyncratic responses to landscape and patch variables, patch occupancy models suggest that competition may influence their respective distributions and abundances, and accordingly their influence on the rest of the forest community. Experimental studies, however, are wanting. We present the result of a large-scale experiment in which we removed white-footed mice or gray squirrels from small, isolated forest fragments in Dutchess County, New York, and added these mammals to other fragments in order to alter the abundance of these two species. We then used mark-recapture analyses to quantify the population-level and individual-level effects on resident mice, squirrels, and chipmunks. Overall, we found little evidence of competition. There were essentially no within-season numerical responses to changes in the abundance of putative competitors. Moreover, while individual-level responses (apparent survival and capture probability) did vary with competitor densities in some models, these effects were often better explained by site-specific parameters and were restricted to few of the 19 sites we studied. With only weak or nonexistent competition among these three common rodent species, we expect their patterns of habitat occupancy and population dynamics to be largely independent of one another.

Publication types

  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Competitive Behavior*
  • Ecosystem*
  • Forests*
  • Mice / physiology*
  • New York
  • Sciuridae / physiology*

Grants and funding

This research was supported by grants from the Environmental Protection Agency (STAR Grant 83377601) and the National Science Foundation-National Institutes of Health joint program in the Ecology of Infectious Diseases (EF0813035). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.