Mus musculus Linnaeus, 1758 . Syst. Nat., 10th ed., 1:62.

TYPE LOCALITY: Sweden, Uppsala County, Uppsala .

DISTRIBUTION: Spread throughout most of world through its close association with humans (Ellerman and Morrison-Scott, 1951); in some areas restricted to human dwellings and habitats maintained by human activity; sometimes feral where introduced.

SYNONYMS: abbotti, adelaidensis, airolensis, albertisii, albicans; albidiventris (Burg, 1923, not Blyth, 1852), musculus var. albinus, albus, tomensis morph amurensis, ater, azoricus, bactrianus, bateae, bicolor, bieni, borealis, brevirostris, canacorum, candidus (Laurent, 1937, not Bechstein, 1796), caoccii, castaneus, caudatus, cinereo-maculatus, commissarius, decolor, domesticus, dubius (Hodgson, 1845, not Fischer, 1829), dunckeri, faeroensis, far, flavescens (Fischer, 1872, not Barrett-Hamilton, 1896, Elliot, 1839, or Waterhouse, 1837), flavus (Bechstein, 1801, not Kerr, 1792), formosovi, fredericae, funereus, gansuensis, gentilis, gentilulus, gerbillinus, germanicus, gilvus, hanuma, hapsaliensis, helgolandicus, helviticus, helvolus, heroldii, homourus, hortulanus, hydrophilus, indianus, jalapae, jamesoni, kaleh-peninsularis, kambei, kuro, lundii, maculatus, major (Severtzov, 1873, not Brants, 1827, or Pallas, 1779), manchu, manei (Gray, 1843), manei (Kelaart, 1852), musculus var. melanogaster, minotaurus, mohri, mollissimus, molossinus, momiyamai, mongolium, muralis, mykinessiensis, mystacinus (Mohr, 1923, not Danford and Alston, 1867), nattereri, niger, nipalensis, niveus, nogaiorum, nordmanni, musculus var. nudoplicatus, orientalis (Cretzschmar, 1826, not Desmarest, 1819), orii, oxyrrhinus, pachycercus, pallescens, percnonotus, peruvianus, polonicus, poschiavinus, praetextus, pygmaeus (Biswas and Khajuria, 1955, not Milne-Edwards, 1874), raddei, rama, reboudi, rotans, musculus var. rubicundus, tomensis morph rufiventris, sareptanicus, severtzovi, simsoni, sinicus, striatus, subcaeruleus, subterraneus, taitensis, taiwanus, takagii, molossinus var. takayamai, tantillus, tataricus, theobaldi, tomensis, tytleri, urbanus, utsuryonis, variabilis, varius, viculorum, vignaudii, vinogradovi, wagneri, yamashinai, yesonis, yonakuni. (see Ellerman, 1941; Ellerman and Morrison-Scott, 1951; Mahoney and Richardson, 1988; and Marshall, in press).

COMMENTS: Subgenus Mus . Schwarz and Schwarz (1943) provided a revision that was followed with minor changes by Ellerman and Morrison-Scott (1951). This arrangement was criticized by Jones and Johnson (1965:394) who found that specimens from Asia they studied "bear little or no relation to this idealized classification." Subsequent treatments of this group were presented by J. T. Marshall, Jr. (1977b, 1981, 1986) and Marshall and Sage (1981). The most recent classification combined biochemical analyses of European, Asian, and African mice (Bonhomme et al., 1984), and the translation of these results, as well as the incorporation of morphological data, into a new view of Mus musculus and its allies (Marshall, in press), that in allocation of the many names to A4, musculus is suprisingly concordant with the treatment of Ellerman and Morrison-Scott (1951). The scientific names listed under M. musculus by those authors, but now placed elsewhere, are here associated with A4, spicilegus, M. spretus, and A4, macedonicus (see those accounts).

Samples of A4, musculus have been the focus of numerous morphometric, chromosomal, and biochemical studies undertaken in context of phylogenetic inquiries; some of the latest contributions that also summarized and cited earlier reports are Evans (1981), Foster et al. (1981), Bonhomme et al. (1984), Potter et al. (1986), Giagia et al. (1987), Hubner (1988), Nlshioka (1987), Winking et al., (1988), Britton-Davidian (1990), Corti and Ciabatti (1990), Gerasimov et al. (1990), She et al. (1990), Searle (1991), Viroux and Bauchau (1992), Karn and Dlouhy (1991), Bush and Paigen (1992), and Scriven and Bauchau (1992). Analyses, using palaeontological and archaeozoological approaches, of the colonization process of W Eurasia by house mice and their origin of commensalism were presented by Auffray et al. (1988, 1990a, c) and Auffray and Britton-Davidian (1992). Analyses of mitochondrial DNA variation among samples from Japanese islands reveal a polyphyletlc origin of Japanese A4, musculus derived from musculus, castaneus, and domesticus strains (Bonhomme et al., 1989).