Fruit visitation patterns of small mammals on the forest floor in a tropical seasonal forest of Thailand

Abstract

The fruit visitation patterns of small mammals were investigated by camera trappings on the forest floor in a tropical seasonal forest of Thailand. A total of 3,165 visits were recorded for seven small mammal species. The four Muridae species, Rattus remotus, Niviventer fulvescens, Leopoldamys sabanus and Maxomys surifer, all of which were nocturnal, were almost completely temporally segregated from the tree shrew, Tupaia belangeri, and the two squirrels, Callosciurus finlaysonii and Menetes berdmorei, which were diurnal or crepuscular. We suggest that the temporal segregation reduced the interference competition between the four Muridae species and the tree shrew or squirrel for fruits on the forest floor. In addition, the visitation patterns for fruit species differed among the four Muridae species and between the tree shrew and the two squirrels, suggesting that the variation in the visitation patterns for fruit species helped to facilitate coexistence among these species. In contrast, the two squirrels were similar in their visitation patterns, both temporally and in their choice of fruit species.