A mouse in the spotlight: Response capacity to artificial light at night in a rodent pest species, the southern multimammate mouse (Mastomys coucha).

Multimammate mice are prolific breeders, can cause significant agricultural damage, and are reservoir hosts for a number of pathogens. They are nocturnal and given their success in urbanised rural environments, we were interested in how they would respond to increasingly bright anthropogenic spaces. We evaluated the locomotor activity of southern multimammate mice (Mastomys coucha), under four treatments: in an outdoor enclosure with natural light and temperature fluctuations, in a laboratory under a standard light regime, and two artificial light at night (ALAN) regimes (2 Lux) of varying proximity.

Wild mice in an urbanized world: Effects of light at night under natural and laboratory conditions in the single-striped grass mouse ().

Urbanization, and the accompanying artificial light at night (ALAN), can disrupt the activity of animals. Such disruptions at the base of a food web can ripple through the ecosystem. Most studies of ALAN are performed in the laboratory.

Learning and laterality in wild-caught Namaqua rock mice (Micaelamys namaquensis).

Individuals often exhibit differences in cognition and/or preferences for one side over the other. Such differences have been attributed to the mating system and lateralization of the brain hemispheres that can differ between the sexes, respectively. Despite the hypothesized significant effects on fitness, only a limited number of rodent studies addresses sex differences in laterality and most focus on laboratory rodents.