Jacob Jens
Federal Research Centre for Cultivated Plants - Julius Kuehn Institute, Vertebrate Research, Munster, Germany.
Integr Zool. 2008 Mar;3(1):3-10. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-4877.2008.00078.x.
Some small mammal populations require human interference to conserve rare or threatened species or to minimize adverse effects in plant production. Without a thorough understanding about how small rodents behave in their environment and consideration of how they react to management efforts, management will not be optimal. Social behavior, spatial and temporal activity patterns, predator avoidance and other behavioral responses can affect pest rodent management. Some of these behavioral patterns and their causes have been well studied. However, their impact on pest rodent management, especially for novel management approaches, is not always clear. Habitat manipulation occurs necessarily through land use and intentionally to reduce shelter and food availability and to increase predation pressure on rodents. Rodents often respond to decreased vegetation height with reduced movements and increased risk sensitivity in their feeding behavior. This seems to result mainly from an elevated perceived predation risk. Behavioral responses may lessen the efficacy of the management because the desired effects of predators might be mediated. It remains largely unknown to what extent such responses can compensate at the population level for the expected consequences of habitat manipulation and how population size and crop damage are affected. It is advantageous to understand how target and non-target species react to habitat manipulation to maximize the management effects by appropriate techniques, timing and spatial scale without causing unwanted effects at the system level.
一些小型哺乳动物种群需要人类干预来保护珍稀或濒危物种，或尽量减少对植物生产的不利影响。如果没有全面了解小型啮齿动物在其环境中的行为方式，也没有考虑它们对管理措施的反应，管理就不会达到最佳效果。社会行为、空间和时间活动模式、躲避捕食者以及其他行为反应都会影响有害啮齿动物的管理。其中一些行为模式及其成因已得到充分研究。然而，它们对有害啮齿动物管理的影响，尤其是对新型管理方法的影响，并不总是清晰的。栖息地操纵必然通过土地利用来实现，并且是有意为之，目的是减少遮蔽物和食物供应，增加对啮齿动物的捕食压力。啮齿动物通常会随着植被高度降低而减少活动，并在觅食行为中提高风险敏感度。这似乎主要是由于感知到的捕食风险增加所致。行为反应可能会降低管理效果，因为捕食者的预期效果可能会受到影响。在种群水平上，这种反应能在多大程度上补偿栖息地操纵的预期后果，以及种群数量和作物损害如何受到影响，目前仍 largely unknown。了解目标物种和非目标物种对栖息地操纵的反应，有利于通过适当的技术、时机和空间尺度来最大化管理效果，同时不会在系统层面造成不良影响。
