Variation in the skull of the Long‐tailed field‐mouse, Apodemus sylvaticus in mainland Britain

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Abstract
Nine skull measurements and a measure of age have been made on each of 613 specimens of Apodemus sylvaticus (L.). The mice were collected from 12 mainland and three island localities. From five of the localities they were obtained in more than one year; each year's collection was kept separate in the subsequent analysis.Unadjusted and adjusted (for age) means have been calculated for each character. Differences in both space and time are small for the mainland populations. A discriminant function analysis was undertaken with a view to accounting for the larger part of the variation using a limited number of linear combinations of the adjusted measurements. It was found that the greater part of the variation was contained in the first two canonical variates. Finally, the generalized distances were obtained.The multivariate analyses suggest that one island population (St Mary's) is quite distinct, the other two (Tresco, Mull) less so, that there is in any one locality little variation from year to year, that the Scottish mainland populations as a group display a small statistical divergence from the English mainland populations and that the former differ rather more from each other than do the latter.