Mensural discrimination between sympatric Peromyscus leucopus and P-maniculatus in southern Illinois

A total of 383 Peromyscus was collected from southern Illinois to determine morphological characteristics useful in identifying individuals as either P. leucopus (Rafinesque, 1818) or P. maniculatus (Wagner, 1845). Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis of salivary amylase was used to positively identify all specimens. No univariate morphological character accurately discriminated between the two species because of a high degree of intraspecific variation. Stepwise discriminant function analysis of external characters correctly classified 97.9% of subadults to species. The most important external character was the tail length/body length ratio. This ratio was also the most important factor in discrimination of adults; the function correctly classified 98.6% of individuals. Considering skull measurements of adults, 9 cranial characters were needed to differentiate between the two species, with a correct classification of 98.9%. For old adults, all specimens were classified correctly using 5 cranial characters. There was no fast, easy, accurate method to discriminate between these species 100% of the time in the field.