SGS-LTER Long-Term Monitoring Project: Spermophilus tridecemlineatus on Small Mammal Trapping Webs on the Central Plains Experimental Range, Nunn, Colorado, USA 1999 -2006, ARS Study Number 118

This data package was produced by researchers working on the Shortgrass Steppe Long Term Ecological Research (SGS-LTER) Project, administered at Colorado State University. Long-term datasets and background information (proposals, reports, photographs, etc.) on the SGS-LTER project are contained in a comprehensive project collection within the Digital Collections of Colorado (http://digitool.library.colostate.edu/R/?func=collections&collection_id=3429). The data table and associated metadata document, which is generated in Ecological Metadata Language, may be available through other repositories serving the ecological research community and represent components of the larger SGS-LTER project collection. Additional information and referenced materials can be found: http://hdl.handle.net/10217/83456. Small mammals (rabbits, rodents) are integral components of semiarid ecosystems because of their roles as consumers of plants, seeds and arthropods, as soil disturbance agents, and as food for raptors, snakes and mammalian carnivores. Because of their vagility and intermediate trophic position, populations of small mammals may track changes in vegetation and the abiotic environment that may result from shifts in land-use and other anthropogenic disturbances. However, these populations are variable over space and time, and their response to environmental changes may not be immediately apparent given their behavioral flexibility and relatively long life-spans and generation times. Patterns in the distribution and abundance of small mammals thus may simultaneously reflect and affect the stability of the shortgrass-steppe ecosystem. Long-term studies of population and community dynamics therefore are needed to fully understand the role of small mammals in grassland ecosystems. Thirteen-lined ground squirrels (Spermophilus tridecemlineatus, SPTR) are the most widely distributed rodent species in shortgrass steppe and the most important in terms of abundance and biomass. Like mo