Mice have been a model organism in biological studies for hundreds of years from behavioral studies to vaccine research. My research uses North American deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus) in their nat..
Mice have been a model organism in biological studies for hundreds of years from behavioral studies to vaccine research. My research uses North American deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus) in their natural environment to investigate how genetic mutation frequencies change in populations of varying sizes. To analyze mutation frequencies, we capture deer mice on different islands in British Columbia’s Gulf Islands. The islands we sample from are of different sizes, which serves as a proxy for population size. We trap the mice at night using Sherman live-traps. Once a mouse is found in a trap, we scruff it and then take a small tissue sample from its ear before letting it go back into the night. This image shows how the mouse is scruffed before an ear tissue sample is taken.
