An Unusual Animal Model Deer Mice As Laboratory Animals

• Main Authors: Charlotte P. Joyner, Lisa C. Myrick, Janet P. Crossl, Wallace D. Dawson
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Burrows; Pacific; Newfoundland; Alaska
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.668.3336; http://stkctr.biol.sc.edu/Reprints/Reprints_5/Joyner_1998.pdf

norvegicus) remain the most widely used species of research rodents. Nevertheless, other rodent species (albeit in smaller numbers) are also consistently employed in laboratory re-search and teaching (Jackson 1997). One species used in-creasingly in toxicological and epidemiological research, as well as in ecological, behavioral, and genetic studies, is the deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus) (Figure 1) (Barry 1975). Wild deer mice are among the most abundant small mam-mals in North America. They range from Alaska to central Mexico, from Newfoundland to Virginia, and from Atlantic to Pacific oceans (Hall 1981). Deer mice are absent only in the southeasternmost states, where they are replaced by re-lated species. More than 60 formally described subspecies of deer mice occupy a wide variety of forest, prairie, and desert habitats from sea level to elevations of 14,000 ft or more. In nature, deer mice nest in logs and stumps or in shallow burrows beneath rocks and clumps of vegetation. They subsist on seeds supplemented with occasional crickets or other insects. Owls, snakes, foxes, weasels, and other small carnivores find these rodents a staple food source, and thus they play an important role in natural ecosystems (King