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No description available.

The aim of the study was to find out the character of abundance fluctuations in a field vole population on immission clearings in the Krušné (Ore) Mountains during a 25 year series of trapping. Another aim was to find out the influence of climaticconditions on these cycles, concretely the influence of local climatic condition and the influence of North-Atlantic oscillation

This master thesis contains detailed description of the elements of Günthers?s vole social behaviour, from agonistic, investigative, and amicable, to reproductive behaviour. Each of the observed behavioural elements is put into context, interpreted, and compared with behaviour reported from other vole or rodent species. The resulting ethogram will be helpful in future ethological studies of this species.

The study investigated the effect of non-genetic social factors (represented by litter size, litter sex composition, and affinity to age cohort) on the development of consistent inter-specific differences in reaction to novelty in common voles (Microtus arvalis). The voles were tested in three behavioural experiments ? Forced Open Filed test (FOF), Unforced Open Field test (UFOF), and Radial-arm maze (RAM). A siginificant impact of compontents of social environment was detected.

The aim of the thesis is to assess the effect of biological protection and anthropogenic effects that influence the number of raptors and owls in agrocenoses. The importance of these predators as biological protection of crop-plants against rodents is on the rise in the past decades. There is also an effort to examine the relationship between raptors and their prey to understand the topic better. From 2015 to 2017, 8,693 mouse-eating raptors and owls have been accepted to animal rescues in the Czech Republic. Although, it is necessary to take into account that only about 1% of injured birds get to the rescues. Most of them die further from the place of injury or become a prey of other predators. The majority of birds had been accepted due to injury, mostly because of electric wire burns (30.63%), road hit (21.85%) or obstruction impact (9.33%). Injury by another animal, feather damage and gun wound were not a rarity either. 42.95% of accepted birds died – 18.49% of these had to be destroyed (especially if the cause of injury was electric burns or road hit). The extent of anthropogenic threat on raptors and owls was analysed based on the abovementioned data. The last part of the thesis deals with the effect of biological protection against common voles (Microtus arvalis). Two specimens – Falco tinnunculus and Buteo buteo – were assessed on an area of 100 km2 with the estimated 26 pairs of each species. Several factors had to be taken into account in the estimate. The population of Falco tinnunculus removed 52,767 common voles per year and the population of Buteo buteo removed 177,708 of common voles per year. The predatory pressure on the vole is estimated to 12.9%. Even thought the number should not be omitted, it would not be accurate to state whether biological protection functions or not. There are several variables that must be taken into account. The result of the estimate is based on middle population density of common vole, thus it would much lower in case of accession of population gradation. On the contrary, raptors and owls can accelerate the fall of the population after gradation culimation and maintain a longer interval before a new gradation.

The aim of this study was investigate the development of behaviour of common vole in usually used personality test - Open Field test. This study also used a new behavioural approach ? behavioural reaction norms - to investigate the relationship among personality traits, behavioural plasticity and body weight and chosen social characteristic. There were found the effects of adult body weight and litter size on individual behavioural plasticity and also the negative correlation between personality traits and behavioural plasticity, signaling the different level of habituation dependent on personality traits.

The aim of this thesis was to empirically examine one of the theories regarding the laws of intraspecific variability in animal behavior, which assumes that differences in behavior are directly related to individual differences in the rate of growth. One of our most common rodents, common vole (Microtus arvalis) was chosen as a model species, mainly because lots of previous studies on this species have demonstrated, among other things, presence of consistent differences in behavior.