Diet of the crest-tailed mulgara (Dasycercus cristicauda) in the Strzelecki Desert
Peter Contos A and Mike Letnic A B
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A School of Biological Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia.
B Corresponding author. Email: m.letnic@unsw.edu.au
Australian Mammalogy 42(2) 211-215 https://doi.org/10.1071/AM19003
Submitted: 15 January 2019 Accepted: 20 August 2019 Published: 6 September 2019
Abstract
A population of the crest-tailed mulgara (Dasycercus cristicauda) was recently located in the southern Strzelecki Desert in 2015. We analysed the diet of this population from scats (n = 87) collected over two sampling periods in 2016. Beetles were the most favoured food item, followed by spiders, ants and the small mammal Notomys fuscus. Within the beetles, ground beetles (Carabidae) and darkling beetles (Tenebrionidae) were the most frequently consumed. Dasycercus cristicauda appeared to exhibit a seasonal shift in prey consumption, moving from vertebrates in July 2016 to invertebrates in November 2016, while also consuming a wide and varied range of prey, even including rabbits in their diet in July 2016. The flexible diet observed in Dasycercus cristicauda may be a response to the fluctuating availability of food found in desert environments.
Additional keywords: arid, arthropod, insectivore, micro-carnivore, persistence, rodent.
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