A census of a community of small terrestrial vertebrates

Abstract

A small vertebrate community of eighteen terrestrial species was revealed by removal trapping in 1 ha of Western Australian Banksia woodland in autumn. Nine of these species were lizards, three were mammals, three were snakes and three were frogs. The use of pitfall and mammal traps on an 8 × 8 m grid was shown to be sufficient to census the majority of terrestrial species in the study site. A biomass of 2063 g/ha of terrestrial species was estimated from trapping records. Frogs (three species) had the greatest biomass (41% of total), but the introduced mouse Musmusculus contributed the greatest biomass (36%) of any single specie.