Mice On the March

From The Japan Times of all places, a story about Canadian mice and climate change in the Great White North.

Mice in Canada are mutating and migrating farther north in response to climate change, according to McGill University research released Monday.

The study, published in the journal Evolutionary Ecology, found that “milder winters have led to physical alterations in two species of mice in southern Quebec in the past 50 years,” lead researcher Virginie Millien said in a statement.

It also adds to evidence that “warming temperatures are pushing wildlife north,” she said.

Over the past decade, researchers looked at two common species found in eastern North America — the deer mouse and the white-footed mouse.

As winters got milder, the white-footed mouse moved farther north at a rate of about 11 km (7 miles) per year, according to the study.

At the Gault Nature Reserve on Mont Saint-Hilaire, about 40 km east of Montreal in the Saint Lawrence valley, 9 out of 10 species caught in the 1970s were deer mice, while only 10 percent were white-footed mice.

Those proportions are now reversed as more white-footed mice have crossed the Saint Lawrence River, northbound.