Environmental Heterogeneity as a Differential Driver for Density of Two Sympatric Rodent Species.

ABSTRACT: Environmental heterogeneity drives patterns of species diversity by shifts in population abundances. High levels of heterogeneity may be associated with the disruption of ecosystem structure and, in turn, with the decline of specialist species due to a reduced availability of the habitats or resources they need. We analysed two taxonomically close and sympatric rodent species with differences in niche breadth: the forest specialist Apodemus flavicollis and the generalist A. sylvaticus . We set our study along a gradient of environmental heterogeneity across different developmental stages of a deciduous oak forest originally managed through coppicing. We assessed the densities of Apodemus species through spatially explicit capture-recapture analyses in 12 grids during a

SUBMITTER: Gasperini S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12603565 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature