High relative frequency of Sicista subtilis (Dipodidae, Rodentia) in owl-pellets collected in Borsodi Mezőség (NE Hungary)

Cserkész, Tamás (2007) High relative frequency of Sicista subtilis (Dipodidae, Rodentia) in owl-pellets collected in Borsodi Mezőség (NE Hungary). Folia historico-naturalia Musei Matraensis, 31. pp. 173-177. ISSN 0134-1243

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Abstract

The Southern birch mouse Sicista subtilis (Pallas, 1773) is one of the rarest small mammals of Central Europe. Once it was a sporadic species of the Carpathian basin, but today it is endangered, and has disappeared from all but one of its known localities. From the Borsodi Mezõség Landscape Protected Area, 336 remnants of S. subtilis among the determined 23200 prey items from Tyto alba pellets were detected. This is the only known occurrence world-wide of the subspecies S. subtilis trizona (Frivaldszky, 1865) in recent times. The mean frequency of S. subtilis in owl-pellets is 2.4% but in 1998 the frequencies were 8.3% (112 specimens) and 27.2% (28 specimens) in two adjacent localities. The apparent decrease in Murinae and Sorex araneus in 1997–1998 may partially explain the extremely increase in frequency of S. subtilis. The other obvious reason for the high frequency of S. subtilis in owl-pellets is the high increase in density on the field, which is well proved by the high frequencies detected parallel on two localities in the same time and by the occurrences on the edge of the protected area where it had not been occurred before.

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