Impact Of Noise On Seed Dispersal Of Rodents

Rodents, feeding mainly on leaves and seeds, are the primary consumers and the prey of higher consumers in the food chain. They thus play a key regulator in the energy flow and material transfer of ecosystem. Moreover, the hoarding behavior of rodents facilitates the dispersal of seeds and decreases the probability of predation. Therefore, rodents play a key role in the forest recruitment. However, natural and anthropogenic disturbance may destroy this mutualism by altering the rodents’behavior. Here, we investigated the effect of noises from natural and anthropogenic environment on the rodents in Shennongjia, Hubei province. The main results are as follows:In the study of rodents’population dynamics, we found a decline in the rodents’ density along the increased intensity in road interference. The analysis of covariance of viscera organs showed that the lung, liver and kidney of Niviventer confucianus differed significantly in different road interference, with the highest value found in national road. In the analysis of digestive tract morphology of N.confucianus. fresh weights including stomach, small intestine and large intestine contents, and dry weights of small intestine exhibited a significant variation in different road interference. The analysis of food habit showed no significant difference in food composition in different road interference and N. confucianus preferred seeds than leaves and stems, flowers and insects. These results indicated that seeds were the main souse of food of N.confucianus and different intensity of road interference promoted the alteration of physiological process of seed predators.Seed predation rate of N. confucianus differed significantly under different noise, with the highest predation rate under road noise. No significant difference was detected in the identification of different quality seeds, while N. confucianus can identify good seeds without noise disturbance and the identification rate is relatively low under road noise. These results indicated that noise can promote the seed predation and dispersal but decrease the dispersal of high quality seeds, which may affect the forest recruitment process.