Mammals normally maintain their core body temperature (CBT) despite changes in environmental temperature. Exceptions to this norm include suspended animation-like states such as hibernation, torpor, and estivation. These states are all characterized by marked decreases in metabolic rate, followed by a loss of homeothermic control in which the animal's CBT approaches that of the environment. We ...

New Zealand has four rodent species, the ship rat (Rattus rattus L.), Norway rat (R. norvegicus Berkenhout), kiore (or Polynesian rat, R. exulans Peale) and the house mouse (Mus musculus L.), all of which have been introduced. Their presence has implications for conservation management as they prey on native bird (Bell, 1978; King, 1984), reptile (Whitaker, 1978) and invertebrate (Ramsey, 1978;...

After migrant chromosomes enter a population, they are progressively sliced into smaller pieces by recombination. Therefore, the length distribution of "migrant tracts" (chromosome segments with recent migrant ancestry) contains information about historical patterns of migration. Here we introduce a theoretical framework describing the migrant tract length distribution and propose a likelihood ...

The chief types of spotting thus far described in the house mouse, Mus musculus, are ordinary recessive piebald spotting and dominant spotting. Dominant spotting has been shown to be lethal in the homozygous condition because of the anemia associated with it. The purpose of this paper is to describe a new recessive spotting and its linkage relations. Since this new spotting gene is very closely...

The house mouse Mus musculus represents a valuable tool for the analysis and the understanding of the mammalian circadian oscillator. Forward and reverse genetics allowed the identification of clock components and the verification of their function within the circadian clockwork. In many cases unforeseen links were discovered between a particular circadian regulatory protein and various disease...

The Major Urinary Proteins (MUPs) of the house mouse, Mus musculus domesticus, are 19 kDa beta-barrel lipocalins that are involved in chemical communication between individuals. Many of them are excreted in urine where they play multiple roles, including coding of owner identity and transport, and slow release of bound volatile pheromones. It has been shown that mass spectrometric analysis of i...

BACKGROUND Mus musculus is a pest in urban and rural habitats where it consumes and contaminates food and may transmit diseases to human and domestic animals. Its control by anticoagulants is partially effective because of aversive behaviours and resistance. In this context, we wanted to assess the potential of the use of predator odours as repellents in experimental feeding trials using urine ...

The house mouse, Mus musculus L., usually has twenty-six presacral vertebrae: these consist of seven cervical, thirteen thoracic and six lumbar vertebrae (Weber, 1950; Deol, 1958; Berry & Searle, 1963; Berry, 1964). The twenty-sixth vertebra is, however, sometimes abnormal, especially among laboratory mice: on one or both sides it may be fused with the sacrum. There are then five typical lumbar...

The feed preference of two species wild mice, the house mouse (Mus musculus), and mound-building spicilegus) was investigated (kept in our laboratory for 25 generations). Our interest focused on (i.e. if mice choose type closest to their natural food). proximate composition granulated feeds offered differed minimally; crude fat fibre content mixture higher, only this contained insect protein. B...

Polymorphism of animal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has been shown to involve point mutations and limited length variations affecting essentially noncoding regions. In two wild mice of the European subspecies Mus mus musculus we found a mitochondrial mutant with a very large deletion in a coding region. The deletion is 5 kbp long (31% of the mitochondrial chromosome) and encompasses six tRNA genes...