Colonization, mouse-style
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CO M M E N TA R Y
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Colonization, mouse-style Sofia I Gabriel1, Fríða Jóhannesdóttir2, Eleanor P Jones3 and Jeremy B Searle*2 See research article: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/10/325
Abstract Several recent papers, including one in BMC Evolutionary Biology, examine the colonization history of house mice. As well as background for the analysis of mouse adaptation, such studies offer a perspective on the history of movements of the humans that accidentally transported the mice.
Commensals of humans are likely to share the human global distribution. Being easily noticed, and surviving and reproducing well in environments that humans create, they also include some of the most favored model organisms. A prime example of this is the house mouse, Mus musculus, which is both the ‘classic’ mammalian model organism and a globally present commensal. Through its association with humans, the house mouse is even found in the remotest archipelagos, such as Kerguelen, a group of sub-Antarctic islands with a mean summer temperature as low as 8°C. It is the mouse populations inhabiting this inhospitable place that are the focus of a study by Hardouin et al. in BMC Evolutionary Biology [1]. With all the genomic tools available, there is currently a scramble to study the genetics of adaptation in house mice. What better place to study that than Kerguelen? Here, human occupancy is restricted to the few inhabi tants of a research station on the main island (Grande Terre). The mice on these islands live outdoors in extreme conditions and, in contrast to the typical seed-eating of house mice elsewhere, they feed primarily on inver tebrates. To understand the adaptations for this excep tional lifestyle, it is important to know something about the history of the mice. In particular: where did the mice come from? Is it a genetically mixed population? Is the population young or old? Hardouin et al. [1] investigated *Correspondence: [email protected] 2 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, Corson Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853-2701, USA Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
all these questions for Kerguelen house mice which belong to the western subspecies, Mus musculus domesticus.
The Kerguelen study Hardouin et al.’s study [1] involved 437 mice from Kerguelen, an unprecedented coverage for the analysis of colonization history of such a small area. They found remarkable consistency in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences on Grande Terre and most of the surrounding small islands, suggesting that these populations are the product of a single relatively recent colonization (ultimately deriving from Europe). This fits with the recorded discovery of the archipelago in 1772 (by a Frenchman called Kerguelen-Trémarec) and settle ment by mice either at the time or with subsequent human arrivals. Two of the other small islands in the archipelago (Cochons and Cimetière) may have been colonized in a second, separate introduction, as their mice belong to a di
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