Preliminary study of seed predation in desert and montane habitats

Multifactorial experiments in which domestic seeds in shallow glass containers were distributed in desert and montane habitats provided data on identity of seed predators (whether rodents or ants), spatial and temporal pattern of their foraging activities, and their preferences for sizes and species of seeds. The results indicate that in some desert ecosystems both rodents and ants are important and efficient collectors of seeds. These two taxa overlap greatly in several parameters of seed utilization, suggesting that they are potentially close competitors. Rodents removed much more seed than ants, perhaps because they are more efficient at locating and harvesting large clumps. This technique has considerable promise for assessing the significance of competitive interactions between distantly related taxa in natural ecosystems.