Effects of landscape type and extensive management on use of motorway roadsides by small mammals

We compared the relative abundances of small mammals along extensively mana ged motorway roadsides (with a narrow mown strip adjacent to the roadway) i n three distinct landscapes (garrigue, pine plantation, and intensive farml and), to evaluate the relative effects of management and landscape traverse d on roadside small-mammal populations. In each landscape, the landscape ma trix (adjacent habitats); the mown strip, and the intervening unmown strip of roadside were sampled using snap traps. The roadside communities differe d from those of landscape matrices, both in the relative abundances of indi vidual species and in the proportion of each species captured. Species rich ness was greater on roadsides than in cropland and pine plantations, but th ere was no difference in the garrigue landscape. However, this greater rich ness was due to species that were rarely caught. The three dominant species (93.7% of captures), greater white-toothed shrew (Crocidura russula), wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus), and common vole (Microtus arvalis), were gene rally more abundant on roadsides than in the landscape matrices, especially in the unmown strip in the case of the first two species. Voles showed sea sonal variation, being more abundant in mown strips at the population peak. The ecotone attributes of extensively managed motorway roadsides seem to b e favourable to most small-mammal species, regardless of the landscape matr ix.