PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Laura N. Cuypers
AU  - Wim L. Cuypers
AU  - Amélie Gildemyn-Blomme
AU  - Laura Abraham
AU  - Senne Aertbeliën
AU  - Apia W. Massawe
AU  - Benny Borremans
AU  - Sophie Gryseels
AU  - Herwig Leirs
TI  - No evidence for avoidance of black rat scent by the presumably less competitive Natal multimammate mouse in a choice experiment
AID  - 10.1101/103853
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 103853
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/01/28/103853.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/01/28/103853.full
AB  - In Africa, indigenous multimammate mice (Mastomys natalensis) only appear to live commensally in houses when invasive black rats (Rattus rattus) are absent, yet little is known about the underlying mechanism. Avoidance through smell may cause the absence of M. natalensis from areas occupied by R. rattus, but this hypothesis has not yet been tested. We conducted a Y-maze choice experiment where 15 M. natalensis were offered a choice between corridors containing conspecific scent, R. rattus scent, and a control scent. Residence time in the R. rattus corridor was greater than that in the control corridor but equal to that in the M. natalensis corridor, suggesting that multimammate mice do not actively avoid the scent of their invasive competitor.