Ecological and Biological Studies on Some Species of Rodents

The present work aimed to study rodents species in different localities and habitats.In addition study the effect of certain climatic factors on population abundance of rodents and maturity status of the dominant rodent species.Also, laboratory experiments were carried out to study the food preference and acceptability of albino rat (Rattus norvegicus) and albino mice (Mus musculus) for categories of food stuff to determine the suitable food stuff as a step for using it as a carrier of proper baits characterized by high acceptability and palatability for commensal rodents to use it in rodent control. We found that the community composition was associated to the landscape structure, characterized by different proportions of land-cover types. So,the existence of different environments within the landscape units allowed the species present in the region to occupy the urban ecosystem.In terms of population ecology and management,we observed that the timing of the onset of reproduction may affect the number of offspring produced during the breeding season. Besides food and predation constraints, the onset of reproduction may be strongly density-dependent.