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Materials of garden dormouse summer nests in Germany

  • Johannes Lang ORCID logo EMAIL logo , Raissalyn M.E. Kneisel and Sven Büchner
Published/Copyright: July 31, 2024

Abstract

Nesting is a central topic in the behavioural ecology of many species, but data on the materials used to construct mammal nests are rarely reported. This paper describes the most commonly used components from 25 summer nests of the garden dormouse, a small threatened rodent endemic to Europe. Median nest dry weight of 25 nests was 15.5 g (10.3–21.1 g) and moss was the most common material (78 %), followed by leaves (9 %). Mosses were also the most frequently used material, with Hypnum cupressiforme being the most frequently used taxon in 11 out of 25 nests.


Corresponding author: Johannes Lang, Clinic for Birds, Reptiles, Amphibians and Fish, Working Group for Wildlife Research, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, D-35392 Giessen, Germany, E-mail:

Funding source: German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation

Acknowledgments

We thank Monika Göhlich, Steffi Jessolat, Corina Klein, Andreas Martius and Hannes Sollfrank and volunteers from BUND groups Wiesbaden and Flörsheim for collecting garden dormouse nests and Renate Rabenstein for the picture. We thank two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on the first version of the manuscript.

  1. Research ethics: No animals were disturbed during this study as only abandoned nests were collected.

  2. Author contributions: JL and SB devised the study. RK dissected the nests and identified the material under supervision of JL. JL and SB wrote the paper. All authors provided comments on the manuscript and approved the final version for publication.

  3. Competing interests: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

  4. Research funding: This study is part of the project “In Search of the Garden Dormouse” in Germany that was funded by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation with resources from the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection.

  5. Data availability: Not applicable.

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Supplementary Material

This article contains supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/mammalia-2024-0014).


Received: 2024-02-08
Accepted: 2024-06-07
Published Online: 2024-07-31
Published in Print: 2024-11-26

© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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