Wildlife Initiatives - Tom Risch

Current Projects:

• Small Mammal Diversity
• Ecological Assessments
• Habitat Change

Small Mammal Diversity

Tom Risch, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences, Arkansas State University, has been working with Belize Lodge & Excursions sampling the small mammal diversity of the Boden Creek Ecological Preserve (BCEP). The BCEP contains a variety of habitats, each of which supports a unique assemblage of small mammals. The area around the Indian Creek Lodge includes maintained fields and two ponds. The edges of the fields are home to a large population of cotton rats. Here it is common to see birds of prey hunting for cotton rats. The pond edges provide habitat for semi-aquatic mammals like rice rats. The rice rats also utilize the areas along the Boden Creek and the Golden Stream, which are also home to larger semi-aquatic mammals like water opossums.

The jungles of BCEP provide habitats not only on the forest floor, but also in the complex network of vines and branches that are found from the forest floor to the canopy, this where the tree opossums and climbing rats are found. The diversity of habitats found on the BCEP supports several species of opossums and rats. Some of these species are ecologically similar in terms of the habitats they use and the foods they rely. Tom's research investigates this 'niche overlap' and wills result in information that can be used to conserve the mammalian diversity of tropical forests.