TY  - JOUR
A1  - Eccard, Jana
A1  - Klemme, Ines
T1  - Reducing mortality of shrews in rodent live trapping - a method increasing live-trap selectivity with shrew exits
JF  - Annales zoologici Fennici : descriptive, analytic and experimental zoology from the boreal region
N2  - Shrews have very high metabolic rates and are often unintentionally starved in rodent live-traps during capture mark recapture (CMR) studies. Here, we suggest a shrew exit as a modification to rodent traps. To test whether this modification is (1) saving shrews and (2) not jeopardizing results of rodent captures, we compared captures in Ugglan traps with and without shrew exits, studying bank voles (Myodes glareolus) in a spruce forest in central Finland. Numbers of captured bank voles and body size of smallest juvenile bank voles were not affected by the shrew exit, while the number of captured common shrews (Sorex araneus) was reduced from 31 to 0 individuals per 100 trap nights. However, rare larger shrew species (> 8 g body weight) could not escape through the exit. A shrew exit can, therefore, save smaller shrew species in standard live-trapping of vole-sized rodents without affecting CMR data of the rodent.
Y1  - 2013
SN  - 0003-455X
SN  - 1797-2450
VL  - 50
IS  - 6
SP  - 371
EP  - 376
PB  - Finnish Zoological and Botanical Publishing Board
CY  - Helsinki
ER  -