Species richness, composition and microhabitat characteristics of non-volant terrestrial mammals in disturbed habitats

A study on the small mammals communities was carried out in disturbed habitats aroundsabah, namely university malaysia sabah (ums), klias peat swamp forest reserve(klias), kawang forest reserve (kawang), kalabakan forest reserve (safe) and maliaubasin conservation area (maliau). the objectives were (1) to determine the speciesrichness and composition of non-volant small mammal communities in disturbedhabitats; (2) to characterize the microhabitat-use patterns of the non-volant smallmammal communities in disturbed habitats; and (3) to determine the microhabitatpreferences of the non-volant small mammal communities in disturbed habitats. the aimof this study was to investigate how the habitat disturbance affects the species richness,community compositions and microhabitat-use pattern of the small mammals. this studywas conducted from october 2014 to march 2015 with a total sampling effort of 540trap-nights. overall, 71 individuals representing 14 species were successfully caughtduring this study. the species richness peaked at safe, and then declined at the rest ofthe study sites. habitat variables analysis showed that all study sites were divided intothree distinctive groups in terms of habitat types. canonical discriminant functionanalysis were used to analyze the microhabitat preferences and use-pattern of smallmammals and results showed the preferences of small mammals towards shrub cover(rattus rattus and callosciurus notatus), litter cover (callosciurus prevostii and echinorexgymnurus) and herbs limber (tupaia gracilis). The locations of the traps have not been given longitute and latitute as there were set on animal trails approximately 20metres from one another.

Authors

• Wai, Leona — Universiti Malaysia Sabah
• Bernard, Henry — Universiti Malaysia Sabah

Keywords

• Small mammals
• Habitat disturbance
• Microhabitat preferences
• Microhabitat use-pattern
• Species richness
• Non-volent mammals
• Oil palm
• Disturbed forest
• SAFE project

Funders

• Universiti Malaysia Sabah

Permits

• Research — Sabah Biodiverstiy Council (NA)

Worksheets

Files

• Veg_Volent_mammals.xlsx

Taxa

33 GBIF taxa, 0 sequence-derived taxa.