BODY SIZE, ENERGY USE, AND COMMUNITY STRUCTURE OF SMALL MAMMALS

Body size, energy use, and community structure of small mammals

Body size has long been hypothesized to play a major role in community structure and dynamics. Two general hypotheses exist for how resources are distributed among body sizes: (1) resources are equally available and uniformly utilized across body sizes and (2) resources are differentially available to organisms of different body sizes, resulting in a nonuniform or modal distribution. It has als...

Community Structure of Desert Small Mammals: Comparisons across Four Continents1

Presencelabsence data for the small-mammal species at sites in seven deserts were analyzed for evidence of similarity in community structure. The deserts studied were located in North and South America (268 and 118 sites, respectively), Australia (245 sites), Israel (54 sites), and greater Eurasia (Thar, 15 sites; Turkestan, 36 sites; Gobi, 98 sites). Patterns observed in all deserts included: ...

Antibiotic Use in Small Mammals

Energetics and the evolution of body size in small terrestrial mammals

Many species of very small terrestrial mammals exhibit dinal patterns in their body size, ofren with larger individuals predominating in populations from higher latitudes (Berg­ mann's law). Classically, this pattern has been explained as reflecting the advantageous surface-to-volume ratio of larger animals, which provides them with a thermoregulatory advantage in colder regions, because it red...

Energy and field size dependence of a silicon diode designed for small-field dosimetry

Purpose: To investigate the energy dependence/spectral sensitivity of silicon diodes designed for small-field dosimetry and obtain response factors (RFs) for arbitrary photon spectra using Monte Carlo (MC) simulations.   Methods: The EGSnrc user-code DOSRZnrc was used to calculate the dose deposition in water and in the active volume of a stereotactic diode f...