The behavior characteristics and physiological mechanisms of the north expansion and invasion of the weasel and the competition with the local brown house mice.

Frontiers in Zoology, an international English-language journal sponsored by the German Zoological Society, published a research paper from the Animal Behavior and Chemical Communication Laboratory of the Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, reporting on the behavioral characteristics and physiological mechanisms of rattus tanzumi's northward expansion and invasion, competing with the local R. norvegicus.
and brown house mice are two main species of house-dwelling rodents, which belong to the near-edge species.
Yellow-chested rats are smaller than brown-breasted rats, which used to be mainly distributed in the Yellow River and south of the Yangtze River in China, and have expanded significantly northwards in the past two decades, and have now been in central Hebei Province, northern Shanxi Province, and even Qinghai, and have partially or completely replaced the local brown-family mice.
factors that affect the success of species invasion, among which the competition between invasive species and local close species is one of the concerns of ecologists and evolutionary biologists.
the researchers conducted a number of experiments using indoor wild rat populations to explore the competitive characteristics and mechanisms of the weasel invasion with indigenous brown house mice (R.n. humiliatus).
Invasive species tend to have stronger aggressive behavior and competitiveness than local close relatives, but there is no direct confrontation between the two mice, but after long-term intersectoral odors and other mutual stimulation, male yellow-breasted mice's own odors are more sexually attractive and more popular with the same female mice;
suggests that long-term interoperability between species may promote the success of yellow-breasted mice and reduce the success of brown-breasted mice, thereby facilitating the invasion of yellow-breasted mice and replacing brown-breasted mice.
further analysis of the physiological endocrine system found that the weasel had significantly higher blood cortisol than brown rats, and that the long-term stimulation of interstitia odor had no effect on the blood cortisol levels of neither mouse.
However, the expression of the GR (glucosticosteroids) gene in brain hippocupial tissue increased significantly in brown mice, which may increase the damage of blood glucosticoids to the hippocupal;
these physiological data also indicate that the long-term stimulation of intersectoral odors is conducive to the long-term competition of weed rats in the long-term competition with brown house mice.
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