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Doctorat
États-Unis
1976
THE ROLE OF MICROHABITAT IN STRUCTURING DESERT RODENT COMMUNITIES
Titre : THE ROLE OF MICROHABITAT IN STRUCTURING DESERT RODENT COMMUNITIES
Auteur : Price, Mary V. (Mary Vaughan)
Université de soutenance : University of Arizona
Grade : Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) 1976
Résumé
Competition is thought to play a central role in determining
patterns of resource use and species abundances in natural communities.
Nevertheless, as yet we do not know the extent to which competition for
scarce resources can determine the structure of multi-species assemblages.
Enclosure experiments were used to see if resource use by seed eating
desert rodents changed in response to the presence of competitors.
In addition, perturbation experiments assessed the effect of resource
availability on species abundances. Results suggest that competition
maintains interspecific differences in the microhabitats from which
seeds are gathered, and that the availability of appropriate microhabitats
determines patterns of species abundances on a local scale.
Mots clés : Desert ecology — Arizona. ; Desert animals — Arizona.
Page publiée le 25 février 2016, mise à jour le 23 décembre 2016