DOUBLE CAPTURES OF SMALL MAMMALS IN SINGLE-CAPTURE TRAPS - RANDOM ENCOUNTERS OR SOCIAL TRAVELING

We captured 38 intraspecific pairs of five species of small mammals in single-capture Sherman live traps during 76,508 trap nights over 14 c ombined years in four separate studies in Texas and Arkansas. While ra ndom nonsynchronous encounters cannot be completely ruled out for doub le-capture events in single-capture live traps, double-capture data me eting one or more of the following restrictive criteria may best be in terpreted as the result of close pair or social traveling: 1) no inter specific double captures, 2) a nonrandom sex-age association between p airs captured together, 3) recaptures of pairs previously caught toget her, 4) a small proportion of double to single captures, and 5) no mor e than two animals captured together in one trap. The double captures reported here largely meet the above criteria. We also captured four i ntraspecific pairs of small mammals in three sizes of snap traps durin g 81,311 trap nights over 4 years in a fifth study. Data from double c aptures in snap traps provide stronger indirect evidence of close soci al traveling in small mammals than is available from live traps.