Genetic structure in Orkney island mice: isolation promotes morphological diversification

Following human occupation, the house mouse has colonized numerous islands, exposing the species to a wide variety of environments. Such a colonization process, involving successive founder events and bottlenecks, may either promote random evolution or facilitate adaptation, making the relative importance of adaptive and stochastic processes in insular evolution difficult to assess.

Here, we jointly analyse genetic and morphometric variation in the house mice (Mus musculus domesticus) from the Orkney archipelago. Genetic analyses, based on mitochondrial DNA and microsatellites, revealed considerable genetic structure within the archipelago, suggestive of a high degree of isolation and long-lasting stability of the insular populations. Morphometric analyses, based on a quantification of the shape of the first upper molar, revealed considerable differentiation compared to Western European populations, and significant geographic structure in Orkney, largely congruent with the pattern of...