The diet of weasel (Mustela nivalis) collected in agricultural mosaic plain regions of Hugary was studied using the analysis of stomach and rectum contents (n = 155). As a percentage relative frequency of occurrence, diets consisted of 85% small rodents (mainly Microtus spp.), 10% birds (mainly Passeriformes), and lizard, wasp, blood and plant matter. Consumption of small mammals increased from winter to summer and autumn. No predation on lagomorphs was found. Standardized trophic niche breadth was very narrow (mean, Bsta= 0.07). The food consisted of characteristically small (15–50 g) and terrestrial prey.
We examined the reliability of laboratory-derived calibration curves for age determination of field individuals of the common vole, Microtus arvalis. The sex-specific calibration curves for age determination based on the relationship between eye lens mass and age derived in the laboratory were applied to a live-trapped field population of common vole. When comparing the individual’s age to the length of its trapping history, we found a slight tendency for underestimation of real age. These errors were observed slightly more in females than in males and in individuals captured over a longer time. This could mean that growth rates in captive animals, especially older ones, and in females are greater than those from the field. The month of first trapping has no effect on the presence of the error. We suggest that, in population studies with a special concern for ageing individuals over the whole life span, other methods should be examined, such as those measuring insoluble eye lens proteins or calibration curves based on more than one predictor.
We combined mitochondrial (cyb, control region, coi, nd4) and nuclear (irbp, ghr, sry, lcat) DNA sequence data to infer phylogenetic relationships of arvicoline voles. The concatenated supermatrix contained 72.8 % of missing data. From this dataset, Bayesian inference showed close relationships of Arvicola and Chionomys, Proedromys with Lasiopodomys and Microtus gregalis, Phaiomys with Neodon and M. clarkei. Genus Microtus formed a supported group with Blanfordimys and N. juldaschi. The gene partition taxon sets were explained in the multilocus phylogeny in such a way that the resulting Bayesian inference tree represented a unique solution on a terrace in the tree space. This means that although the supermatrix contained a large proportion of missing data, it was informative in retrieving a phylogeny with a unique optimality score, tree likelihood.
We present a phylogenetic analysis of snow voles by combining all published cytochrome b sequences of 47 species of Microtus, Blanfordimys, Neodon and Chionomys and a new sequence from Chionomys gud. By applying powerful, modern approaches to phylogenetic reconstruction such as maximum likelihood (ML) and Bayesian inference methods (BI), we provide new information on the relationships between Chionomys and Microtus. Both phylogenetic analysis methods showed that the genus Microtus is paraphyletic with respect to Blanfordimys, Neodon and Microtus gregalis. The BI topology recovered strong support for the monophyly of Chionomys + Microtus gregalis, while th monophyly of Chionomys was supported only by the ML analysis. The two Chionomys lineages (defined by molar morphology and karyological features), “nivalis” (C. nivalis) and “roberti” (C. gud and C. roberti), were strongly supported by cytochrome b analysis.