The study describes the diet of Mustela erminea L. in the Magadan oblast. The major component is Clethrionomys voles in the oblast, C. rufocanus in the Sea of Okhotsk area and C. rutilus in the basin of the Kolyma River. In winter the percentage of mammals declines by about 20%. The stoat compensates for the lack of voles by scavenging fish collected from the beds of ephemeral lakes and streams. Birds, insects, and plant foods are minor components of the stoat’s diet.
Carnivores in Mediterranean ecosystems respond to the inherent heterogeneity of these systems by tracking the spatial and temporal availability of food resources. This feeding strategy, however, has been associated primarily with generalist carnivores and little is known for specialist species su...
In this study we examined temporal and geographical variations in a sample of 124 skulls of the weasel Mustela nivalis and 146 skulls of the stoat M. erminea, collected in Sweden between 1959-1992 and 1913-1990, respectively.We used Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to combine the effects of lat...
The introduction of mammalian predators to oceanic islands has led to dramatic declines in the abundance of many native species. Conservation management of these species often relies on low-cost predator control techniques that can be implemented over large scales. Assessing the effectiveness of ...
The composition of pied flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca Pall.) nestling diet was studied in the zone of strong pollution with emissions from the Middle Ural Copper Smelter (Revda, Sverdlovsk oblast) and in the background area from 2005 to 2007. The results show that diversity of the diet decreases...
Simple survey methods for small mammals, such as indices of trap captures per unit effort, are often the only practicable means of monitoring populations over the long term and at landscape scale and the only source of valuable historical data. They include two fundamental assumptions about the t...
A fragment of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) cytochrome b gene was sequenced in sable from Magadan oblast, Khabarovsk krai, and Kamchatka. Using phylogenetic analysis, the presence of two clusters (A and BC), with the divergence value of 1.4%, was demonstrated. Analysis of the cytochrome b gene me...
An illustrated description of the male, female, and larva of a new water mite species (Atractides magadanensis) from running waters in Magadan oblast is presented. The species is characterized by the following features: male posterior genital acetabula elongated rectangular pedipalpal genu with v...
This research combines automated Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and iterative logistic regression scripting to data-mine for terrain variables that predict stoat (Mustela erminea) visitation to tracking-stations in a New Zealand indigenous forest and explore the impact of spatial analysis...
The plant cycle hypothesis says that poor-quality food affects both herbivorous voles (Microtinae spp.) and grouse (Tetraonidae spp.) in vole decline years, leading to increased foraging effort in female grouse and thus a higher risk of predation by the goshawk Accipiter gentilis. Poor-quality fo...
Anticoagulant rodenticides are widely used to control rodent populations but they also pose a risk of secondary poisoning in non-target predators. Studies on anticoagulant rodenticide exposure of non-target species have mainly reported on frequency of occurrence. They have rarely analyzed variati...