A comparison of the effectiveness of pitfall and longworth live-trapping techniques in population studies of house mice

Abstract

A population of house mice (Mus musculus Linnaeus, 1758) on a cereal farm in Australia was trapped for 6 months during a period of rapid population growth using Longworth and several designs of pitfall live-traps. The most effective method of capturing mice in pitfall traps was by interconnecting the pitfalls with a drift fence that was positioned over the centre of each trap. Pitfall traps without fences and those prebaited for five weeks, caught few mice. The trappability of mice ranged from 30 to 40% for pitfalls and from 11 to 20% for Longworths, indicating the mice may have a greater tendency to avoid repeated captures in Longworths than in pitfalls. Both trapping methods were effective in sampling all age classes of mice. Overall, mice caught in pitfall traps were not significantly lighter or smaller than those caught in Longworth traps. The results of this study indicate that the two trapping methods provide similar, although independent, samples of a mouse population.