habitat_narrative
Terrestrial
The Hairy-footed Gerbil is a nocturnal species that occurs extensively throughout the Nama Karoo and Succulent Karoo biomes, generally within sandy soils, or sandy alluvium associated with grass, scrub or thin woodland cover (Nowak 1999, Perrin and Dempster 2013). Their occurrence extends into savannah, desert and dunefield habitats. For example, they are common in the Kalahari Desert in lightly vegetated dune slopes, calcrete river banks and pans (Perrin and Dempster 2013). The population in the dunefields of Algoa Bay favours the dune swales habitat, avoiding dense vegetation and dune crests. In Rolfontein Nature Reserve, Northern Cape Province, a single specimen was caught in the Rhus ciliata community (Jooste and Palmer 1982). Within the North West Province, the species is common on Kalahari sands and found in all the western Kalahari vegetation types and may occur in the Mafikeng Bushveld, but so far no evidence has been found (Power 2014). The populations of G. p. exilis in the coastal white sand dunes seem to be found most commonly on the interface between the grass vegetation and the open sand dunes but not on the bare sand dunes themselves. Such grass cover may be critical to their survival and, if so, must be a part of any conservation effort to protect tracts of white dunes along the coastal region.Abundance is negatively correlated with plant cover (Kerley and Erasmus 1992), and it is thus an open habitat specialist (Kerley et al. 1990). This is a solitary species, which dwells in simple burrows with a single entrance hidden by vegetation, and a tunnel extending to about 220 mm underground (Downs and Perrin 1989, De Graaf and Nel 1992, Skinner and Chimimba 2005). As omnivorous rodents (Kerley and Erasmus 1992), G. paeba consume arthropods, seeds and plant material (Downs and Perrin 1989, Griffin 1990, Kerley et al. 1990, Kerley 1992b, Perrin et al. 1992). Plant material was found to constitute the majority of their diet in the Karoo, while seeds and insects made up a lesser proportion (Skinner and Chimimba 2005). Contrastingly, in the Kalahari, seeds made up a much larger proportion of their diet (Nel et al. 1984). Although insect consumption did not vary seasonally in the Karoo, consumption of plant material was highest in late summer (February/March), while seeds were eaten far more commonly in winter (June/July) (Kerley 1992b).
It appears able to breed opportunistically throughout the year, although, in the Karoo, pregnancies were only recorded from October to May (White et al. 1997), and in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, reproductive potential increases in summer. The gestation period is 21 days (Ascaray 1986), and litter size has been recorded as 3.7 in Botswana (Smithers 1971), 3.0 in the Karoo (White et al. 1997), 4.1 in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park (Nel et al. 1984), and 4.6 in captivity (Dempster and Perrin 1989).
Ecosystem and cultural services: Rodents are both predators and dispersers of plant seeds in the environment. Since these gerbils are hoarders, they may serve in a limited capacity as seed dispersers. Seeds taken into the burrows are likely to be consumed, but some of the seeds scatter-hoarded in caches or buried are often forgotten or abandoned, and if these escape other seed predators, they may germinate and establish seedlings. Additionally, this species is a valuable food source for small carnivores (Perrin and Dempster 2013).
