چکیده :
Control operations for invasive ship rats, Rattus rattus, in New Zealand forests are often followed by
increased house mouse, Mus musculus, detections suggesting rats suppress mice. A potential mechanism
is intraguild predation, either by interference competition or as simple predatory behaviour. If aggression
by rats towards mice is mainly competitive, it should include threat and display features associated with,
for example, intraspecific fighting. If predatory, it should lack these features and be associated with
feeding. In the first of two captive experiments we observed interactions between paired, live rodents,
either side of a wire-mesh screen, and found that most rats were aggressive to mice. This aggression
lacked threat and display characteristics typical of encounters with conspecifics and was rarely reciprocated
by mice. In a second experiment, euthanized mice were drawn by a line through cages occupied
by rats fed either a restricted or unrestricted diet. Rats of both groups attacked and restrained the
euthanized mice, and all rats that interacted with the mice ate at least part of them, although foodrestricted
rats tended to eat more. As the aggressive response of ship rats towards mice lacked threat
and display features and was related to feeding, we conclude that it resembles predatory behaviour. Our
findings provide a better understanding of the interactions between ship rats and house mice, which
hinder their management where they coexist as damaging invaders. However, further research is
required to determine whether the results of our captive experiments are consistent with wild rat
behaviour
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