Role of digestive system specialization in trophic competition between stripped field mouse and Korean field mouse
I. S. SHEREMETEV, V. I. DEMCHENKO, I. N. SHEREMETEVA, V. A. NESTERENKO
Federal Scientific Center of the East Asia Terrestrial Biodiversity FEB RAS, Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladivostok, Russia
Keywords: competitio-n, digestive tract, specialization, functional morphology, Apodemus
Abstract
The role of interspecific competition in biotic communities is poorly understood. The study deals with transformation of the Korean field mouse/stripped field mouse taxocene, which includes range expansion of the second one during global environmental change. The main goal is a comparative estimation of main intestine divisions’ length in these species to define their competitive asymmetry and to understand its role in the taxocene dynamics. We show that the assimilation carbohydrates prevailing in plant tissue is significantly more effective in the Korean field mouse intestine than in the stripped field mouse intestine, while their difference in the protein and lipid assimilation was low. We conclude that the Korean field mouse is the stronger trophic competitor in the taxocene, and the competition play an important role in its transformation. However, neither competition nor global change can directly influence range expansion of the stripped field mouse separately. A interactive mechanism of their influences on the Korean field mouse/stripped field mouse taxocene transformation is discussed.
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