How many rodents die on the road? Biological and methodological implications from a small mammals’ roadkill assessment on a Spanish motorway.

Some small mammal species use road verges as a habitat for sheltering. As a result, their populations suffer mortality from roadkill in an unknown extent. We analysed the road mortality of small mammals and the population impact of roadkill on wood mouse along 1 year on a 4-km motorway stretch. To account for potential bias in carcass sampling, we conducted walking surveys with the traffic interrupted and we performed three carcass persistence experiments to estimate total number of roadkills. The estimations were contrasted with previous studies and the population abundance on the road verges. The spatial pattern and the effects of seasonality and traffic volume on roadkill were analysed. We recorded 84 rodent carcasses with a mean carcass persistence of 6.65 days (SE = 0.41). The estimations of roadkill ranged between 190.2 and 238.3 individuals km−1 year−1, with a mean value close to a monthly 6 % mortality for the most common specie. Roadkill was more frequent during the hottest and driest months, and showed a unimodal relation with traffic peaking at 8100 vehicles day−1. A spatial aggregation of roadkill was detected with 80–190 m clustering. Our results suggest that, although rodents suffer greater roadkill mortality than previously reported, it affects a small percentage of the wood mouse population in our study area. This source of mortality is unlikely to affect population viability in the short term. Our results show that roadkill surveys should be specifically designed for small mammals to have a more accurate analysis of the effects of roadkill on their populations. Palabras clave: Mammal, Motorway, Rodent

Datos y Recursos

Cite como

Ruiz-Capillas P. Mata C. y Malo J.E. How many rodents die on the road? Biological and methodological implications from a small mammals’ roadkill assessment on a Spanish motorway. Wiley-Blackwell, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11284-014-1235-1

Clipboard Icon
Recuperado: 25 Dec 2025 19:33:11
RIS BibTeX

Metadatos
Descargar
DCAT-AP/NTI-RISP

Información básica
Tipo de recurso Texto
Fecha de creación 23-05-2025
Fecha de última modificación 23-05-2025
Mostrar histórico de cambios
Identificador de los metadatos 4d07d570-ef7c-5ffa-9781-2db5db82cf01
Idioma de los metadatos Español
Temáticas (NTI-RISP)
Categoría del conjunto de alto valor (HVD)
Categoría temática ISO 19115 biota
URI de palabras clave
Información bibliográfica
Nombre del autor Ruiz-Capillas, P., Mata, C. y Malo, J.E.
Nombre del editor Wiley-Blackwell
Identificador alternativo DOI: 10.1007/s11284-014-1235-1
Identificador del autor
Email del autor
Web del autor
Procedencia
Declaración de linaje
Perfil de Metadatos
Notas sobre la versión
Versión