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Diet of two invasive rodent species in two Mayan communities in Mexico

  • Jesús Alonso Panti-May ORCID logo EMAIL logo , Yessica Margely Gurubel-González , Cesar Tzuc-Dzul , Eduardo Emir Palomo-Arjona , Carmen Salazar , Carlos Baak-Baak , Julian E. García-Rejón , Carlos Machain-Williams and Silvia F. Hernández-Betancourt
Published/Copyright: March 9, 2019

Abstract

The gastrointestinal content analysis of 344 invasive rodents (120 black rats and 224 house mice) in two Mayan communities revealed that rats consumed a high percentage of plants (93.3%) and arthropods (95.5%). In contrast, arthropods were less frequent (55.8%) than plants (94.6%) in mouse’s diet. In both rodent species, fragments of Sapotaceae and Hymenoptera were common plant and arthropod foods, respectively. Our results suggest that the food availability present in the Mayan communities is similar to the one described in natural habitats.

Award Identifier / Grant number: 2014-247005

Funding statement: We thank the families from Xkalakdzonot and Paraíso for their participation and cooperation; Dr. Salvador Flores for the identification of some seeds; Irene Castillo for her valuable comments and the revision of the English version; and Belén Herrera for Figure 1. This work was funded by Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT – México) (Funder id: 10.13039/501100003141, no. 2014-247005). J.A. Panti-May was supported by the CONACYT – Doctoral fellowship (no. 259164).

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Received: 2018-05-08
Accepted: 2019-01-24
Published Online: 2019-03-09
Published in Print: 2019-11-26

©2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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