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IMAGE: A house mouse from a southern population (left) is much smaller than a house mouse from a northern population (right), even when raised in the same environment, showing that the. view more
Credit: UC Berkeley photos by Katya Mack
The European house mouse has invaded nearly every corner of the Americas since it was introduced by colonizers a few hundred years ago, and now lives practically everywhere humans store their food.
Yet in that relatively short time span 400 to 600 mouse generations populations on the East and West Coasts have changed their body size and nest building behavior in nearly identical ways to adapt to similar environmental conditions, according to a new study by biologists at the University of California, Berkeley.
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IMAGE: House mice from cold environments (right) have evolved to become bigger than house mice from warm environments (left) in a few hundred years. view more
Credit: Katya Mack
House mice in New York and Alberta independently evolved to have large bodies and build bigger nests to cope with the cold, according to a study publishing April 29th in the open-access journal
PLOS Genetics by Kathleen Ferris and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley.
As house mice began to colonize North America 200 - 300 years ago, populations encountered radically different temperatures to their native range in Europe. To understand how they adapted genetically, physically, and behaviorally, the researchers captured wild house mice (Mus musculus domesticus) from five populations along the west coast of North America, from Arizona to Alberta. They sequenced the genomes of 50 mice and returned 41 mice to the lab to establish breeding populations. Lab-reared descendan