For more information on the project and how to participate, click below:
Our lab is leading a project investigating the genomic impact of urbanization on house mice. With help from many residents, we collected house from three focal cities: New York City, NY, Philadelphia, PA, and Richmond, VA, and the rural areas around them. With these samples, we are asking how habitat impacts traits like body size, diet, the microbiome, gene expression, and genetic variation. Finally, we are looking for signals of adaptation associated with habitat. Results will be coming soon and we will post them here and share them with our community participants.
This project is supported by the National Science Foundation. We have many collaborators including Dr. Jason Munshi-South at Drexel University and Dr. Nikita Burrows at Monmouth University, among others. Learn more here: https://www.monmouth.edu/news/phifer-rixey-recognized-by-national-science-foundation-with-1-1-million-grant/
Help us with Phase 2! We had wonderful support from residents for the first part of the project and will have results to share soon. In the meantime, we’re starting a next wave of collection to explore how house mice throughout Philadelphia are connected. To do so, we’re intensively sampling within the City of Philadelphia and collecting as many mice as we can. The process is simple. If you find a dead mouse, contact us at wewantmice@gmail.com and we can coordinate to pick-up a sample. If you can, place the specimen in a sealed ziploc or closed container you are willing to part with. It’s not required, but if you can place it in a freezer or on ice, that will help preserve the DNA.