Efeitos do habitat e dapluiviosidade sobre a distribuição e atividade de roedores em comunidade urbana: um estudo longitudinal

Abstract

Urban slum environments favours the establishment and distribution of animals vectors and reservoirs of zoonotic pathogens. Among these animals the species Rattus norvegicus is the most abundante and distributed in these urban spaces. Maintaining its abundance and occupation can be on the availability of resources and the physical and climatic attributes within the habitat, such as rainfall. These conditions modulate their behavior, movement and persistence of the rodents in these spaces. Our goal is to temporally understand the habitat conditions at different scales contribute to the presence of rodents and the effects of rainfall on these populations in a tropical urban community. The tracking plate method was used to estimate the spatial activity and the resistance of its images during six sampling periods between 2014-2017 in the urban community of Brazil. Spatial and spatial data sources were collected for the sampling unit and analyzed using generalized mixed effects models. We found that the variables of rats present a temporal and spatial variation in the deprived urban spaces, this variation is associated with habitat conditions, such as the presence of garbage, open sewage, vegetation, presence of rubble that positively associates with the activity of rats. Contrarily, impermeable surfaces within these communities function as a protective factor for the presence of rats. The accumulated rainfall of the week significantly affects the activity of the rodents, and this activity change vertically within the community in a precipitation gradient. These results will contribute to the structural and population control actions of rodents defining time and moment for these actions having an impact on the incidence of zoonotic diseases in tropical urban communities.