Apr

4

2007
 
 

Squeakers nab squawkers



you want some?Invasive mice pose a major threat to island bird populations

No one suspected the humble house mouse Mus musculus could be as much of a threat to native island wildlife as introduced rats or cats, but a study published this week will change all that. Writing in Biology Letters, an international group led by the University of Cape Town’s Ross Wanless provide evidence that mouse predation of chicks was partly responsible for the poor hatching success of Atlantic petrels Pterodroma incerta and Tristan albatrosses Diomedea dabbenena on Gough Island, a World Heritage Site in the South Atlantic Ocean. Film evidence showed up to ten mice at a time attacking and feeding from the still-living chicks, which at 8kg weighed in at some three hundred times their attacker’s body mass. Mice are the only non-native mammalian predator on Gough Island, something that Wanless and colleagues suspect could be important: free from their own predators, the tiny terrors can run riot. Time to bring back the cats, perhaps? Or maybe the cane toads…

Source: Wanless RM, Angel A, Cuthbert RJ, Hilton GM & Ryan PG (2007) Can predation by invasive mice drive seabird extinctions? Biology Letters DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2007.0120

Image © Andrea Angel & Ross Wanless

Filed Under Endangered species, Invasive species, Monitoring, Tools and technology | 

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One Response to “Squeakers nab squawkers”

  1. Rodent swapsies : Journal Watch Online on April 27th, 2007 5:02 pm

    […] musculus population, which has boomed in the absence of their larger rodent cousins. And given what mice can do to seabirds, who says they won’t have a go at turtles too? Source: Witmer GW, Boyd F & Hillis-Starr Z […]

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