Abstract
Mt. Meru is Tanzania’s second highest mountain and the ninth highest in Africa. The distribution and abundance of small mammals on this massif are poorly known. Here we document the distribution of shrews and rodents along an elevational gradient on the southeastern versant of Mt. Meru. Five sites were sampled with elevational center points of 1950, 2300, 2650, 3000, and 3600 m, using a systematic methodology of standard traps and pitfall lines, to inventory the shrews and rodents of the slope. Ten species of mammal were recorded, comprising 2 shrew and 8 rodent species with the greatest diversity for each group at 2300 m. No species previously unrecorded on Mt. Meru was observed. Two rodent genera that occur in nearby Eastern Arc Mountains (Hylomyscus and Beamys) were not recorded. The rodent Lophuromys verhageni and a recently described species of shrew, Crocidura newmarki, are the only endemic mammals on Mt. Meru, and were widespread across the elevational gradient. As in similar small mammal surveys on other mountains of Tanzania, rainfall positively influenced trap success rates for shrews, but not for rodents. This study provides new information on the local small mammal fauna of the massif, but numerous other questions remain to be explored. Comparisons are made to similar surveys of other mountains in Tanzania.
Highlights
The distribution of mammals along mountain slopes is of increasing interest to ecologists and mammalogists to document species turnover along environmental gradients and, as a result, the efforts to document the montane faunas of various massifs around the world have intensified over the past few decades
More shrews were captured in buckets than in traps (X2 = 61.3, P
160 were shrews (6.3% success) and 10 were rodents (0.4% success). This conspicuous difference was evident both across the entire survey and at each of the five sites sampled (Table 2). Both shrew species (Crocidura allex and C. newmarki, weighing between 3.5–11 g) found during the survey were caught in traps
Summary
The distribution of mammals along mountain slopes is of increasing interest to ecologists and mammalogists to document species turnover along environmental gradients and, as a result, the efforts to document the montane faunas of various massifs around the world have intensified over the past few decades. Climate change has recently increased this curiosity and the need for detailed investigations concerning this subject. Documenting the present elevational distribution of organisms along a given slope will facilitate the monitoring of that biota during times of climatic perturbation or habitat alteration. Biogeographic, ecological, and evolutionary studies are advanced by a greater comprehension of montane biotic systems. Examples of PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0162009 September 21, 2016
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