Seasonal Foraging by Forest Mice Enhances Loss of Weed Seeds from Crop—Field Edges

Abstract

Abstract Native seed predators, such as mice (Peromyscus spp.) and ground beetles (Carabidae), consume weed seeds and waste grain within agricultural fields and thus provide a potentially important service to farmers. Most previous investigations of agricultural seed predation services have focused on within-field factors that affect rates of seed removal and consumption by field-resident seed predators. However, seasonal migrants from adjacent non-crop habitats may also contribute to removal of weed seed, particularly along field edges. We investigated whether rates of weed seed removal within fields increased during summer crop growth when Peromyscus leucopus noveboracensis (White-Footed Mouse), a ubiquitous forest-dwelling rodent in the eastern US, seasonally migrates into crop fields from adjacent forested woodlots. We used exclosure experiments to quantify the relative number of Setaria faberi (Giant Foxtail) seeds removed from seed trays by vertebrate and invertebrate seed predators within 4 corn fi...