Repellent effect of synanthropic house mouse urine odor on small forest mammals.

In this study, we examined the effect of synanthropic house mouse ( Mus musculus ) urine odor on catching probability of small mammals to live traps. We conducted a series of field experiments in August 2016 and 2017 in a natural forests of the northwestern Moscow Region (Russia). Small mammals were trapped at two 4-ha fields using capture-mark-recapture technique by setting 200 live traps (100 points, 2 traps per point) within each field. One trap in each pair was odorless (control) with bait only, whereas the other one was odor-baited with 20 μL of the urine of a synanthropic house mouse. Further analysis was based on the data collected from 2 rodent species (bank vole Myodes glareolus , herb field mouse Apodemus uralensis ) and 3 shrew species (common shrew Sorex araneus , Laxmann's shrew Sorex caecutiens , and Eurasian pygmy shrew Sorex minutus ). As a result, only bank voles significantly avoided odor-baited live traps. Using generalized linear mixed models, we showed that the choice of a trap by bank voles depended on their age, whereas the probability of repeated capture to a certain live trap was related to their prior experience. We discuss the possible role of components of synanthropic house mouse urine in the population management of exoanthropic small mammals.