History
Unique to the islands, the ancestors of the St Kilda's field mouse are believed to have arrived on the ships of Viking settlers. The taxon was first described in 1899 by Gerald Edwin Hamilton Barrett-Hamilton as the separate species Apodemus hirtensis. A year later in a specific review of mouse species the taxon was reclassified as a subspecies of the common fieldmouse Apodemus sylvaticus.
Studies of the mouse populations on the islands were carried out in 1931, 1939, and 1955. These studies documented the rapid extinction of the endemic house mouse species (which was dependent for its survival on grain and other commodities used by the islands' human inhabitants), and its subsequent replacement by the field mouse, through a process of niche expansion.
Read more about this topic: St Kilda Field Mouse
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