Wood mice

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Wood mice
Wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus)

Wood mouse ( Apodemus sylvaticus )

Systematics
Subordination : Mouse relatives (Myomorpha)
Superfamily : Mice-like (Muroidea)
Family : Long-tailed mice (Muridae)
Subfamily : Old World Mice (Murinae)
Tribe : Apodemini
Genre : Wood mice
Scientific name
Apodemus
Kaup , 1829

The wood mice ( Apodemus ) are a genus of the old world mice belonging to the Apodemini tribe . They are distributed with around 20 species across Eurasia and North Africa. In Central Europe the coming fire mouse , the wood mouse , the yellow-necked mouse , the Alpine mouse and the dwarf forest mouse before.

Body features

The wood mice are small to medium-sized old world mice that resemble the harvest mouse in their overall appearance . Their head-trunk length is 60 to 150 millimeters, the tail length 70 to 145 millimeters and the body weight 15 to 50 grams. The tail is usually about as long as the rest of the body, but it can also be shorter or a little longer. Unlike the harvest mouse, it is not designed as a prehensile tail.

For forms living in forests, the snout is elongated and the eyes and ears are relatively large; on the other hand, in shapes from more open landscapes, the snout is short and the eyes and ears are relatively small. The front paws are normal. The construction of the hind paws is similar to that of the Palearctic rats . The relatively long hind paws are not widened for climbing, but narrow. The middle three of the five toes are moderately long, while the two outer toes are shorter. The rear foot length is always more than 20 percent and often at least 23 percent of the head-torso length. Wood mouse females have six or eight teats . There are two pairs of teats in the chest area and one or two pairs of teats in the groin region .

The fur of wood mice is usually soft, but like the great Japanese wood mouse, it can be bristly. The guide hairs are usually light and relatively thin. The tail is moderately hairy. The fur color of the top is brownish. It ranges from grayish-yellow-brown or grayish-brown to brown with yellow or red mottling to light brown or pale sand-colored. The underside of the fur is white or grayish, often with yellow mottling. The front and rear paws are usually white. Some forms have a reddish-yellow spot on the chest. The fire mouse has a black eel line .

Habitat and way of life

The yellow-necked mouse is a good climber.

The habitat of wood mice are open and closed forests , hedges , gardens and grassy fields as well as other cultivated areas and wetlands .

They are good climbers , though not as much as the harvest mouse. Compared to this, they are more active jumpers . They are also good swimmers . Depending on the species, they can be active during the day, at night or at twilight . Your action area measures up to about 180 meters. Usually they dig deep burrows , one at the end of the tunnel nest is located. This consists of shredded grass and leaves . The food consists of roots , seeds , berries , nuts and insects and is stored as a supply in the burrows.

The breeding season of wood mice can vary geographically and from year to year. Females give birth to up to six litters in a year . In nature, the average life expectancy is believed to be a year or less. The impact on forest regeneration is complex. In Great Britain the important role in the transport and burial of tree seeds as well as in the destruction of the seedlings was recognized. Wood mice can enter human dwellings in autumn and winter.

distribution

The distribution area of the wood mice extends over large parts of the Palearctic and parts of the Oriental . In Europe they are distributed from Iceland , Ireland and the Shetlands east to Russia and from Scandinavia south to the Mediterranean , to Sicily and Crete . In Africa one species occurs from Morocco to Algeria to Tunisia . In Asia , its range extends from Asia Minor and Turkestan via Siberia to the Pacific Ocean . They inhabit Syria , Iran , Punjab , Kashmir , most of China north of the Yangtze River from Gansu to Sichuan to Shandong , Mongolia , Manchuria , Korea , Japan and Sakhalin . In the Orientalis they are spread from Nepal via Myanmar , Yunnan and Fujian to Taiwan and the Ryūkyū Islands .

Systematics

External system

Musser and Carleton (2005) summarize the wood mice, the Ryukyu spiny rats and the extinct genus Rhagamys as the Apodemus group. Lecompte and coworkers (2008) introduced the tribe Apodemini for these forms .

A close relationship between the wood mice and the Ryukyu spiny rats was assumed due to the structure of the molars, as well as a relationship to the genus Rhagamys from the Quaternary and to the genus Rhagapodemus from the Pliocene . The relationship to the Ryukyu spiny rats is now supported by molecular genetic studies. Investigations of mitochondrial and nuclear gene sequences by Lecompte and colleagues (2008) confirm this sister group relationship , but indicate the considerable age of the divergence between the genera.

Internal system

The small Japanese wood mouse is basal to most other wood mice.
Fire mouse with a noticeable stripe on the back; the species is distributed over large parts of Europe and Asia.

Musser and Carleton (2005) divide the recent wood mice into four groups and distinguish 20  species :

argenteus group

gurkha group:

apodemus group:

  • Fire mouse , Apodemus agrarius (Pallas, 1771) from Central Europe to Central Asia and in East Asia
  • Chevrier wood mouse , Apodemus chevrieri (Milne-Edwards, 1868) in southern China
  • South Chinese wood mouse , Apodemus draco (Barrett-Hamilton, 1900) in China and neighboring areas of Myanmar and India
  • Sichuan wood mouse , Apodemus latronum Thomas, in southern China and bordering areas of Myanmar and India in 1911
  • Korean wood mouse , Apodemus peninsulae (Thomas, 1907) in East and North Asia
  • Taiwanese wood mouse , Apodemus semotus Thomas, 1908 in Taiwan
  • Great Japanese wood mouse , Apodemus speciosus (Temminck, 1844) in Japan and on Kunashir

sylvaemus group:

  • Alpine forest mouse , Apodemus alpicola Heinrich, in the Alps in 1952
  • Balkan rock mouse , Apodemus epimelas (Nehring, 1902) on the Balkan Peninsula
  • Yellow-necked mouse , Apodemus flavicollis (Melchior, 1834) in Europe and the Middle East
  • Talysh wood mouse , Apodemus hyrcanicus Vorontsov et al., 1992 in the Talysh Mountains
  • Orient rock mouse , Apodemus mystacinus (Danford & Alston, 1877) in Western Asia and on Crete
  • Ward wood mouse , Apodemus pallipes (Barrett-Hamilton, 1900) in the Pamir and adjacent areas of Central and South Asia
  • Caucasian wood mouse , Apodemus ponticus (Sviridenko, 1936) in the Caucasus
  • Kashmiri wood mouse , Apodemus rusiges Miller, in Pakistan and India in 1913
  • Wood mouse , Apodemus sylvaticus (Linnaeus, 1758) in Europe and Northwest Africa
  • Harvested wood mouse , Apodemus uralensis (Pallas, 1811) from Central Europe to Central Asia
  • Steppe forest mouse , Apodemus witherbyi (Thomas, 1902) from the Ukraine via the Caucasus to the Middle East

Web links

Commons : Wood mice  - collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

  • Christiane Denys: Genus Apodemus : Field Mice . In: David CD Happold (Ed.): Mammals of Africa. Volume III: Rodents, Hares and Rabbits . Bloomsbury, London a. a. 2013, ISBN 978-1-4081-2253-2 , pp. 377-378 .
  • John Reeves Ellerman: The Families and Genera of Living Rodents. Volume II: Family Muridae . British Museum (Natural History), London 1941.
  • Igor Michailowitsch Gromow, Margarita Alexandrovna Jerbajewa: Млекопитающие фауны России и сопредельных территорий. Зайцеобразные и грызуны . Russian Academy of Sciences (Zoological Institute), Saint Petersburg 1995.
  • Emilie Lecompte, Ken Aplin, Christiane Denys, François Catzeflis, Marion Chades, Pascale Chevret: Phylogeny and biogeography of African Murinae based on mitochondrial and nuclear gene sequences, with a new tribal classification of the subfamily . In: BMC Evolutionary Biology . tape 8 , no. 199 , 2008, pp. 1-21 .
  • Guy G. Musser, Michael D. Carleton: Superfamily Muroidea . In: Don E. Wilson, DeeAnn M. Reeder (Eds.): Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference . 3. Edition. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2005, ISBN 0-8018-8221-4 , pp. 894-1531 .
  • Ronald M. Nowak: Walker's Mammals of the World . 6th edition. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1999, ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 .

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Gromow and Jerbajewa, 1995 (p. 278)
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h Nowak, 1999 (p. 1500)
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Ellerman, 1941 ( p. 93 )
  4. ↑ a b c Ellerman, 1941 ( p. 92 )
  5. ↑ a b Denys, 2013 (p. 377)
  6. ↑ Nowak, 1999 (p. 1501)
  7. ↑ Musser and Carleton, 2005 (p. 902)
  8. ↑ Lecompte and colleagues, 2008 (Tab. 2, p. 8 )
  9. ↑ a b Lecompte and co-workers, 2008 ( p. 11 )
  10. ↑ Musser and Carleton, 2005 (p. 1512)
  11. ↑ Musser and Carleton, 2005 (pp. 1259–1280)