Distribution and abundance of non-flying small mammals in Western Gaya Island, Sabah, Malaysia / Hellena Rahit

A study on the non-flying small mammals was conducted in Western Gaya Island of Tunku Abdul Rahman Marine Park from 20th March 2015 to 23th April 2015. It covers a total of six trails in the Island namely as Padang Point Trail (1.95km), Police Beach Trail (3.25km), Highest Point Trail (3km), Highest Point 2 Trail (3.5km), Sunset Trail (1.5km) and Police beach 2 Trail (3km). The sample was collected by using 20 wire cage traps baited with banana and GPS was used to mark the location of the traps. The objectives of the study were to identify the species of non-flying small mammals in Gaya Island, to map out the distribution and to determine the relative abundance of the non-flying small mammals in the study area. The non-flying small mammals were euthanized with anesthetics chloroform to make the small mammals to be in unconscious state and individuals were identified based on the sex, pelage colour, the body size and the feet morphology. With the trapping effort of 120 trap-nights, 50 individuals of nonflying small mammals with 2 species from the families of Muridae were caught that were 40 Rattus baluensis and 10 Maxomys rajah. Species number decreased with the increasing of elevation of the study site from sea level and decreased at the location that near their predator. The Rattus baluensis were found to have most diverse distribution along the study site, while Maxomys rajah were only found near the twigs.