Mammal road-killing from a Mediterranean area in central Italy: evidence from an atlas dataset.

The dataset available from the compilation of the atlas of mammals of the Province of Rome was used in order to analyze patterns of road-kill. Western hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus), coypu (Myocastor coypus), brown rat (Rattus norvegicus), red fox (Vulpes vulpes), and medium-sized mustelids were over-represented in the roadkilled sub-data set. The spatial coverage (=the ratio between the number of occupied cells from a given species and the total atlas sample cells) of road-killed species was statistically higher than the spatial coverage of the nonroad-killed species. Body size of the mammal species did not influence its likelihood of being killed along roads. Our data did corroborate findings by previous research indicating that road-killed species are characterized by peculiar behavioural and ecological traits (e.g., habitat generalists such as red fox and brown rat) or referred to landscape scale for their dynamics and vagility (wideranging landscape mosaic species such as red fox and mustelids). Normalizing data, we also observed a higher road-killing impact on carnivores when compared to herbivores. Atlas dataset, although providing some interesting information on road-kill pattern for studies carried out at a landscape/regional scale, could not be used for a careful analysis of the ecological correlates of road-killing in mammals because of their largely heterogeneous nature.