Of Mice and Men

Small mammal sampling, Totoket Mountain, North Branford, CT.

by Steven Bosak, Noah Matson, and Andre Heinz
 

Objective:

To view the effects of human disturbance on mouse activity on Totoket Mountain, particularly edge effects created by logging roads.
 

Methods:   

Sherman live traps were baited with crunchy peanut butter and filled with 2-3 cotton balls each to provide nesting material for captured mice.  Traps were laid out in 12 transects.  Two transects were placed alongside each side of a logging road.  Extending from each side of the road, five more parallel transects were laid out spaced 20m apart.  Six traps were placed along each transect, spaced 6m apart, for a total of 72 traps.

Traps were monitored from April 6-8, once in the evening, once in the morning.  Three nights X 72 traps = 216 trap nights, 6 traps X 3 nights = 18 trap nights per transect.
The project design had the following assumptions:

 

 
 

Results

On the third morning, along the third transect on the West side of the road one deer mouse, Peromyscus maniculatus (possibly a white footed mouse, they are very difficult to tell apart), was trapped.  We dropped the mouse from the trap into a clear plastic bag to identify it, then released it unscathed.

These results are inconclusive.  With only one data point we cannot test our hypothesis that there would be differences in the abundance index ( # animals caught / # trap nights) between transects closest to the road and those farther away.  However, our results and the methods may provide information to future classes for comparison.