Social system of the lesser mouse-deer (Tragulus javanicus)

• Published in: MAMMAL STUDY Vol. 31; no. 2; pp. 111 - 114
• Main Authors: Matsubayashi, Hisashi, Bosi, Edwin, Kohshima, Shiro
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English; Japanese
• Published: Tokyo Mammalogical Society of Japan 01.12.2006; The Mammalogical Society of Japan; UniBio Press; BioOne
• Subjects: Short communications; Tragulus javanicus
• ISSN: 1343-4152; 1348-6160
• DOI: 10.3106/1348-6160(2006)31[111:ssotlm]2.0.co;2

The lesser mouse-deer (Tragulus Javanicus), the smallest ungulate species in the world (Ronald 1991), is a common native to the tropical forests of Southeast Asia. As the mouse-deer is a primitive ruminant, investigating their social system is necessary for understanding the evolution of social systems in ungulates. Except for a few field reports on group size (Ratnam 1982；Miura and Idris 1999) and on the fighting and marking behaviours of males based on fragmental observations (Davison 1980), there are almost no reports on their social behavior in their natural habitant. To study social system of the lesser mouse-deer in natural habitat, we analyzed 1)the group size, 2)the core-area overlap, and 3)interaction among neighboring individuals. 「Materials and methods」We conducted field studies at the Kabili-Sepilok Forest Reserve (5°51'N, 117°56'E), Sabah, Malaysia (Fig. 1). The study area was about 7 ha in size, located in a mixed dipterocarp forest in lowlands. The study period was over two years between May 1998 and March 2001. We captured 15 lesser mouse-deer including 9 males (8 adults), 6 females (5 adults), and conducted a radiotracking study fitting radio transmitters (144MHz, 11g, Holohil Systems Ltd., Ontario, Canada) to 11 individuals (7 adult males and 4 adult females).