Food habits of Hylaeamys seuanezi (Weksler, Geise & Cerqueira, 1999) (Rodentia: Cricetidae) in forest formations: a comparison of methods and habitats

Abstract

ABSTRACT Food habits are traces of a species’ natural history that help us to understand how the organisms interact with the environment. Hylaeamys seuanezi is a forest-specialist rodent also recorded in diverse shaded cocoa agroforestry systems. Here we describe and classify its diet, comparing the results acquired from stomach and fecal contents, collected in forest and cocoa agroforest sites. We analyzed 203 samples from 126 individuals: 51 captured in agroforest and 75 in forest. We measured the relative contribution of vegetable and animal matter and the relative frequency of 17 food items. Our results indicate that H. seuanezi consumes a greater proportion of vegetable than animal matter, but should be considered omnivore, given the frequent consumption of arthropods. The richness and composition of items was similar between stomach and fecal samples. The richness of items also did not vary between the environments, but the composition of the items did. Intact seeds were more frequent in samples from forests and unidentified arthropods and Hymenoptera in samples from agroforest. Despite variation among consumed items, the diverse shaded cocoa agroforestry systems provide a diversity of resources, which likely favor the maintenance of H. seuanezi in these plantations and in the study region.