Owl pellets: a more effective alternative to conventional trapping for broad‐scale studies of small mammal communities

摘要: Summary Small mammal community composition is almost universally estimated from conventional trapping, which logistically difficult to scale up for landscape-level assessments. Owl pellets may be a more effective alternative measuring small over large geographic areas due the relative ease and low cost of field collections. However, owl introduce sampling biases that differ those associated with trapping. A thorough comparison traps required before can widely adopted as an research tool studies. We conducted literature review diet-prey availability studies to: (i) compare between trapping when two methods were used simultaneously (ii) assess influence genus habitat type on by these methods. We data 27 published studies, allowed 32 comparisons simultaneously. These included 15 species five common genera different major habitats. Rarefied estimates showed owls consistently sampled identical or higher richness compared Richness rarefied lowest sample size per study not statistically (μΔrichness = 0·20 ± 0·09 SE, P = 0·30); average, 0·95 ± 0·13 SE additional identified Measures dominance evenness both (μΔ1-D = 0·02 ± 0·03 SE; μΔPIE = 0·004 ± 0·04 SE). Species lists, rank-order abundance in moderate agreement (Jaccard = 0·62 ± 0·04 Bray–Curtis = 0·53 ± 0·04 Spearman rho = 0·41 ± 0·07 Linear regression AIC model selection performance versus did based type. Small via was better represented Composition metrics consistent affected type. Thus, are assessments communities.