Abstract
Longworth and Sherman are widely used live traps in small mammal communities in temperate and tropical areas, and their performance has been tested over decades. The Heslinga trap looks like a green colored Longworth trap, but it can be considered a technical improvement of the latter model. Due to the similar design, the Heslinga and Longworth traps are expected to have similar performance, but no study has tested the efficacy of the Heslinga trap in field conditions. In this study we compared its performance against the medium-sized Sherman trap, a widely used live trapping model recommended for small mammal sampling, in 15 small mammal stations during four consecutive years (2019–2022) and eight sampling sessions conducted twice a year (21,600 traps-night). The Heslinga trap recorded more species than the Sherman (11 versus 8), but it also recorded more captures (63% vs. 37%) and recaptures (59% vs. 41%). However, the representativeness of the species in the communities was the same when estimated by each trap model. Nonetheless, differences in detectability by trap model suggested that the occupancy of common species could be underestimated by using Sherman traps. We showed that the Heslinga trap outperformed the Sherman trap regarding species diversity estimates, capture success, and sampling inaccuracies. These results are promising, and owing to the several advantages over the Longworth trap (i.e., stronger, durable, better concealment, and cheaper), the Heslinga trap could be a serious alternative to the more widely used trap.
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Data availability
The datasets generated during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank James Evarts, Mike Lockwood, and Jordi Esquerda, for providing economic and logistic support in the study area, and Antoni Arrizabalaga (Labs’ head) for providing bureaucratic support and guarantee to the small mammal monitoring programs throughout the years. Jana Marco assisted in the field work. Tom Heslinga gave some information about the material used, date of construction, and commercialization of the Heslinga trap. Alfons Raspall kindly provided the pictures of small mammals. We also want to thank the staff of the Natural Parks where the study was performed, which provided the permits and potential location for sampling stations: Albert Vila (PN Capçaleres del Ter i Freser), Gerard Carrion and Ponç Feliu (PN del Cap de Creus), Emili Bassols (PN de la Zona Volcànica de la Garrotxa), Santi Ramos (PN del Montgrí, les Illes Medes i el Baix Ter), and Enric Bisbe (Consorci de Les Gavarres).
Funding
The research was funded by the Catalan Government (Generalitat de Catalunya, grant no. DB201804) and by James Evarts and “Apatura Iris, S.L.”
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IT conceived the idea and OP collected the field data; OP and IT analyzed the data; IT wrote the manuscript; OP and IT contributed critically to the drafts and gave final approval for publication.
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This study was performed under the scientific permits: 2019–SF/554, 2020–SPM/4, and 2021–SF/41, provided by the Catalan Government.
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Communicated by Jan M. Wójcik.
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Palau, O., Torre, I. Testing the efficacy of the Heslinga live trap for small mammal community assessments. Mamm Res 69, 23–31 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13364-023-00720-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13364-023-00720-3