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We implicate ecological processes in assembly patterns of Egyptian desert rodents using spatial variation of distribution and composition of local assemblages. We also compare our assemblages to prior analyses of North American and Australian small mammal communities in terms of species richness and representation of trophic groups.

We studied patterns of occurrence of 29 rodent species among 335 collecting events in 308 sites using museum specimen records resulting from a country-wide survey. The studied taxa vary greatly in their natural histories and ecology. Fully 69% of studied species (20) were localized in 30 or fewer sites (9% of all sites). Site incidence was closely correlated with the geographic range size of species, while local abundance of a species showed little relationship to its geographic range. The species richness of local assemblages ranged from a lone species at 73 sites to 11 species at 3 sites. A total of 214 different combinations were recorded of which 164(77%) were unique to a single site. G. gerbillus was both the most abundant and most ubiquitous species. Coexistence with other species was positively correlated with incidence and geographic range size. Body mass distribution was remarkably uniform for the fauna as a whole, and influenced the geographic distributions and abundance of individual species.

Our sites have low species richness and substantial variability in species composition, which also characterize desert rodent communities elsewhere. Habitat requirements, exclusive distributions of sibling species, low primary productivity, and Egypt’s location all influenced species assembly. The Egyptian and Australian deserts supported higher proportions of low richness assemblages compared to North America. As in North America, Egyptian sites were dominated by granivorous species. (c) 2009 Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Saugetierkunde. Published by Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.