Biometrical identification of the sympatric mouse species Mus musculus domesticus and Mus spretus in Kabylie du Djurdjura (Algeria)
Identification biométrique des deux espèces sympatriques de souris Mus musculus domesticus et Mus spretus en Kabylie du Djurdjura (Algérie)
Résumé
This work aimed to validate biometric identification criteria (body and cranial measurements) for the two sympatric mouse species living in Algeria: the House mouse (Mus musculus domesticus) and the Algerian mouse (M. spretus). Trapped in three localities of Kabylie du Djurdjura, mice were first identified according to morphological criteria and second computing stepwise discriminant analyses and leaveone- out discriminant analyses on sets of the most relevant variables. Body measurements revealed more efficient than cranial measurements to discriminate the species. According to the original diagnosis of M. spretus, the Algerian mouse’s tail was shorter than the House mouse’s tail. The ratio ‘tail length over head and body length’ was highly discriminant (95% of correct classification); the score was still better (97%) when the diameter of the tail was included in the discriminant analysis. On the skull, the zygomatic ratio ‘width of the dorsal ramus of the zygomatic arch over width of the zygomatic arch’ was the only discriminant variable (90.4% of the correct classification). No identification was reliable with mandible measurements. Relevant discriminant values were then compared with values obtained from European samples