Kangaroo Rats (Dipodomys) are small
long-lived graniverous
nocturnal burrow-dwelling rodents of North American arid zones, subject
to substantial risk 
of predation and of food being expropriated by other
seed-eating animals. Some issues of interest include their foraging
and food caching decisions; how they modulate their exposure to
predation
risk; why they exhibit unusually slight sex differences in behaviour
and life history; and the sources and functional significance of
behavioural differences between individuals.
Most of this research on Kangaroo Rats is done at the
Philip L. Boyd
Deep Canyon Desert Research Center in southern California.
Leaver LA, Daly M (2003) Effect of predation risk on selectivity in heteromyid rodents. Behavioural Processes 64: 71-75.
Leaver LA, Daly M (2001) Food caching and differential cache pilferage: a field study of coexistence of sympatric kangaroo rats and pocket mice. Oecologia 128: 577-584.
Daly, M, Behrends, PR &
Wilson, MI (2000) Activity
patterns of kangaroo rats - granivores in a desert environment. In S
Halle & NC Stenseth, eds., Activity patterns in small mammals.
Berlin: Springer Verlag.
Leaver, L & Daly, M (1998) Effects of food preference on
scatter-hoarding by kangaroo rats (Dipodomys Merriami). Behaviour
135:823-832.
Daly, M, Behrends, PR, Wilson, MI & Jacobs, LF (1992)
Behavioural modulation of predation risk: moonlight avoidance and
crepuscular compensation in a nocturnal desert rodent, Dipodomys
merriami. Animal Behaviour 44: 1-9.
Daly, M, Jacobs, LF, Wilson, MI & Behrends, PR (1992)
Scatter-hoarding by kangaroo rats (Dipodomys Merriami) and pilferage from their caches. Behavioral
Ecology 3: 102-111.
Daly, M, Wilson, MI, Behrends, PR & Jacobs, LF (1992)
Sexually differentiated effects of radiotransmitters on predation risk
and behaviour in kangaroo rats, Dipodomys merriami. Canadian
Journal of Zoology 70: 1851-1855.
Daly M (1991) What is behavioral ecology? Newsletter of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology 3(1): 10-11.
Daly M, Behrends P (1984) Effect of moving traps between trapping stations upon rodent retrapping data. American Midland Naturalist 112: 205-207.
Daly M, Wilson MI, Behrends P (1984) Breeding of captive kangaroo rats (Dipodomys merriami and D. microps). Journal of Mammalogy 65: 338-341.
Daly M, Rauschenberger J, Behrends P (1982) Food aversion learning in kangaroo rats: a specialist-generalist comparison. Animal Learning and Behavior 10: 314-320.
Daly M (1979) Of Libyan jirds and fat sand rats Natural History 88: 64-71.
