NDLI: Role of fruits in the diet of small mustelids (Mustela sp.) from the western Italian Alps

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Remonti, Luigi Balestrieri, Alessandro Prigioni, Claudio
Copyright Year	2006
Abstract	The food habits of both weasels and stoats (Mustela nivalis and M. erminea) and the occurrence of fruit in their diet were studied by scat analysis in the Gran Paradiso National Park (western Italian Alps). Being impossible to distinguish between stoats and weasels scats, they were grouped together as the genus Mustela. Despite the high consumption of small rodents, which represented the main food item in the diet of small mustelids (41.5% in mean volume), wild fruits (mainly Rosaceae and Ericaceae) were also relatively common (23.3% in mean volume). Fruits were exploited throughout the year, with an intensive use in seasons of high availability. Their consumption did not significantly differ between habitat types, despite a significant decrease of fruit availability from deciduous mixed forest to alpine prairie. This evidence suggests that this trophic behaviour could represent a consolidated feeding strategy of both weasels and stoats, which seem to adopt an opportunistic behaviour as shown by larger size mustelids. We argue that fruits, owing to their good availability and high profitability, could play an important role in the diet of small mustelids in alpine habitats, slackening their well-documented dependence on rodents.
Starting Page	35
Ending Page	39
Page Count	5
File Format	PDF
ISSN	16124642
Journal	European Journal of Wildlife Research
Volume Number	53
Issue Number	1
e-ISSN	14390574
Language	English
Publisher	Springer-Verlag
Publisher Date	2006-09-01
Publisher Place	Berlin, Heidelberg
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Stoats Weasels Diet Fruits Italian Alps Animal Ecology Zoology
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law Nature and Landscape Conservation

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4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
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