Rodent Assemblages in the Mosaic of Habitat Types in the Zambezian Bioregion

Abstract

Rodent assemblages have ecological importance in ecosystem functioning and protected area management. Our study examines the patterns of assemblages of rodents across four habitat types (i.e., Miombo woodland, Acacia woodland, grasslands and farmlands) in the savanna environment. Capture-mark-recapture (CMR) methods were applied for data collection across the Chembe Bird Sanctuary (CBS) landscape. The Non-metric Multi-Dimensional Scaling (NMDS) was used for exploratory data analysis, followed by Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Tukey–Kramer’s Honestly Significant Difference (HSD) post-hoc tests. The rodent assemblages in CBS significantly differed between the non-farmlands (i.e., Miombo woodland, Acacia woodland and grasslands) and farmlands. There were: (1) zero rodent diversity in farmlands, dominated completely by a pest species, M. natalensis; and (2) different rodent assemblages in three non-farmland habitat types. We suggest that rodent assemblages should be mediated by conservation planning and multi-stakeholder collaboration beyond the protected area boundaries to contribute to a working CBS landscape positively.

Keywords

• habitat preferences
• habitat types
• multiple rodent species
• savanna
• Zambia