I’m not sure where to ask this so if this is the wrong place, please point me in the right direction! This is a question about iNaturalist criteria for identifying subspecies that are extremely similar visually - in particular Mus musculus domesticus, aka the Western European house mouse. (For non-…

It is an interesting question. Personally, I don’t do this or think it’s a good use of time since it isn’t adding any new information to only ID based on location (the location is already in the observation data) and might lead to cases where a different subspecies is ignored/missed/misidentified. …

Thanks for the links to previous discussions! So I guess the takeaway is, I shouldn’t bother trying to refine the IDs down to subspecies, but it might be a good idea to disagree with existing subspecies IDs if they’re far away from their known range, by suggesting it be identified at the species le…

[image] scienceserval: A wild-type, agouti colored Mus musculus would generally need DNA analysis to confirm the subspecies. Was that the criterion by which the subspecies were described in the first place? In cases like this, I always think it best to go by the subspecies description. And if…

As I remember different Acomys species were divided by DNA only (there was geographic separation too, but otherwise similar for us humans animals), so subspecies of domestic mice also could be divided this way, especially if there is a map for them (how useful it is though?).

The answer to your question is in Section 2.3.3 of the JAX link (source for the subspecies map): " If, as the one-species protagonists claim, musculus and domesticus mice simply arrived in Europe and spread toward the center by different routes — domesticus from the southwest and musculus from the …

Question about criteria for mouse subspecies identification

General

Topic		Replies	Views
While IDing, I know the species, but not the subspecies General	26	971	February 18, 2026
Question Regarding Subspecies Identification General question	25	2045	February 6, 2023
Thoughts on Subspecies? General question	46	4951	May 23, 2021
Grouping Domestic Animals with their Non-domestic Counterparts General question	34	2072	May 1, 2022
Identifying birds to subspecies without field marks Nature Talk	25	2051	May 9, 2019

Question about criteria for mouse subspecies identification

Related topics