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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Contents Vol 31(5)

Can outbreaks of house mice in south-eastern Australia be predicted by weather models?

Charles J. Krebs A B D , Alice J. Kenney A , Grant R. Singleton A , Greg Mutze C , Roger P. Pech A , Peter R. Brown A and Stephen A. Davis A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, GPO Box 284, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.

B Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, 6270 University Boulevard, Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1Z4, Canada.

C Animal and Plant Control Commission, GPO Box 2834, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia.

D Corresponding author. Email: Charles.Krebs@csiro.au

Wildlife Research 31(5) 465-474 https://doi.org/10.1071/WR03131
Submitted: 24 December 2003  Accepted: 24 June 2004   Published: 13 December 2004

Abstract

Outbreaks of house mice (Mus domesticus) occur irregularly in the wheat-growing areas of south-eastern Australia, and are thought to be driven by weather variability, particularly rainfall. If rainfall drives grass and seed production, and vegetation production drives mouse dynamics, we should achieve better predictability of mouse outbreaks by the use of plant-production data. On a broader scale, if climatic variability is affected by El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events, large-scale weather variables might be associated with mouse outbreaks. We could not find any association of mouse outbreaks over the last century with any ENSO measurements or other large-scale weather variables, indicating that the causal change linking mouse numbers with weather variation is more complex than is commonly assumed. For the 1960–2002 period we were only partly successful in using variation in cereal production to predict outbreaks of mice in nine areas of Victoria and South Australia, and we got better predictability of outbreaks from rainfall data alone. We achieved 70% correct predictions for a qualitative model using rainfall and 58% for a quantitative model using rainfall and spring mouse numbers. Without the detailed specific mechanisms underlying mouse population dynamics, we may not be able to improve on these simple models that link rainfall to mouse outbreaks.


Acknowledgments

We thank Dean Jones, Micah Davies, Colin Tann, Pip Masters, Jason Cody, and Fiona Cavanaugh for their efforts in collecting the house mouse data from the Walpeup area, and David Chinner, Frank Anderson and students from Roseworthy Agricultural College for collecting data from Roseworthy. This study was funded by the Grains Research and Development Corporation (CSV 15) and the Pest Animal Control CRC.


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