The rodents of Wytham Woods

A beautiful dawn at Wytham woods. Kirsty in the field.

Wytham Woods is a beautiful woodland owned by the University of Oxford, just outside the city limits. Having been in University hands since 1942, this ancient semi-natural woodland is one of the most intensively researched woodlands in the world, with several long-running animal and plant projects ongoing today. The rodents are no exception.

Wild rodents have been studied in Wytham Woods since the forties, with three species regularly captured – wood mice (Apodemus sylvaticus), bank voles (Myodes glareolus) and yellow-necked mice (Apodemus flavicollis). In 2014, Tim Coulson and Marc Brouard established a more intensive rodent capture-mark-recapture study here, that we continue to collaboratively run today.

A Wytham wood mouse!

Using this tractable wild mammal system, in which we can mark and follow marked wild rodents over time, we ask a range of questions about animal ecology and behaviour, and the ecology of their infectious symbionts, both commensal and parasitic.

Wytham also provides a testbed for our new RFID-based technology, designed to help us and other researchers monitor and sample wild small mammals in a non-invasive but powerful way. We are now applying this new tech to address core research questions on symbiont dynamics and transmission in a natural setting.