KMXT 100.1 FM Public Radio in Kodiak, Alaska
Despite often being a household pest, mice may hold key information about Alaska’s historical past. That’s the theory of one undergraduate researcher at Cornell University in New York, and why she’s asking folks in Kodiak to help collect mice this fall.
Camille Mangiaratti is using mouse DNA to track the history of colonization in Alaska. She said mice are a well studied animal all around the world, and have traveled with humans for more than 12,000 years. Much like tracking ancestral DNA in people, Mangiaratti will use mice to see what DNA strands are present and from what countries.
“So basically you can look for signatures in mouse DNA, in the mitochondria specifically, because these signatures sort of preserve themselves throughout time and we can basically use them as a genetic signal for the past – to look into the colonization history of the mice that traveled with the humans. So basically it tells us when people got there, and who got there and basically how successful these established communities were.”
She’s focusing on Southcentral Alaska, because of it’s where many of the first colonizers arrived. She said while much of Alaska’s history is well-documented, there are still gaps, and perhaps even cases of undocumented migrations.
“You know there’s really no way of knowing what happens on this land unless you use something called a bio proxy. Which is what I’m doing, I’m using house mice.”
Mangiaratti is working out of the Searle Lab at Cornell and is partnering with the Baranov Museum to collect mice samples through December. She’s hoping folks who catch mice or have a cat that catches a mouse will clip off part of the ear, put it in a Ziploc bag with the location of where it was found and bring it to the museum. From there Mangiaratti will have the samples sent to her for research and analysis.
“I’m expecting to find mice from Northern Asia, essentially Russia and various signatures from mice that we know came from western Europe – British, Spanish, French and essentially American mice as well will have those same signatures.”
Mangiaratti is collecting mice from Kodiak, Anchorage, Juneau, Cordova, Homer and maybe Valdez, with the hopes of having final results and a published honors thesis by May. She said she’ll hopefully be able to provide historical colonization reports for all the communities she collects mice from.
Here in Kodiak, anyone who’d like to help out can drop off their mice ear clippings at the Baranov Museum Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m., which are the museum’s normal business hours.
