ABSTRACT 97-07098 Vander Wall The effects of seed water content on the foraging success and cache management behavior of rodents The ways that animals interact with seeds are important focuses of population and community ecology, but the role of the physical environment in these interactions has often been ignored. The water content of the soil influences the ability of rodents to detect buried seeds using olfaction. Seeds imbibe water from the soil after it has rained. Rodents find seeds in moistened soil significantly faster than seeds in dry soil. This research project consists of four field experiments designed to reveal how seed/soil water affects how individual rodents find buried seed caches. Topics of experiments are: (1) the role of spatial memory versus olfaction as mechanisms for cache retrieval and management, (2) the comparative olfactory sensitivities of different rodent varieties, (3) the effect of residence time on the detectability of seeds buried in moist soil, and (4) how cache size and depth influence detectability of seeds.
