INVESTIGADORES
SCHLEICH Cristian Eric
libros
Título:
Subterranean Rodents: News from Undergorund
Autor/es:
BEGALL, S; BURDA, H; SCHLEICH, C.E.
Editorial:
Springer-Verlag
Referencias:
Lugar: Berlin Heidelberg; Año: 2007 p. 386
ISSN:
978-3-540-69275-1
Resumen:
Across the globe, in all continents but Australia and Antarctica, at least
250 extant rodent species (38 genera, 6 families according to the classification
applied) spend most of their lives in self-constructed burrows
(Table 1.1, Fig. 1.1). Their subterranean ecotope is dark, microclimatically
stable, hypoxic and hypercapnic, and deprived of most sensory cues available
aboveground. The burrows offer shelter from predators and climatic
extremes, but digging is energetically costly, and the yield of foraging is relatively
low, because the productivity of the subterranean ecotope is rather
low and the food resources (roots and underground plant storage organs
like bulbs and tubers) are mostly unpredictably and unevenly scattered.
These so-called subterranean rodents are specialized in multiple aspects
for their unique way of life in which most events like foraging, mating, and
breeding take place underground. Animals that inhabit underground selfmade
tunnels, but also forage (predominantly) above ground, are called
fossorial. Needless to say, a continuum exists between fossorial and subterranean
rodents, and in the present volume a categorical differentiation
is mostly ignored on purpose. Another mammalian group sharing the
same ecotope, but feeding on invertebrates, are subterranean non-rodent
mammals like marsupial moles, certain armadillos, as well as insectivore
moles (e.g. Talpidae) and golden moles (Chrysochloridae). Although the
title of the book emphasizes that the focus is on subterranean rodents, we
also encouraged the authors to glance at recent findings from studies on
other subterranean mammals, and we hope that the reader will profit from
this.