An electrophoretic comparison between three sympatric species of rodents from Jutland, Denmark

Three sympatric species of rodents, Apodemus flavicollis, Apodemus sylvaticus and Clethrionomys glareolus, trapped in the central part of Jutland (totally 163 specimens), have been analyzed electrophoretically for 33–36 protein loci. The mean heterozygosity values for A. flavicollis and A. sylvaticus are of the same magnitude as for other small mammals, whereas the value is extremely low for C. glareolus. The genetic distance between A. flavicollis and A. sylvaticus is 0.22, while the genetic distance between A. flavicollis and C. glareolus and between A. sylvaticus and C. glareolus is 3.18-3.43. In our material there is no evidence of introgressive hybridization of the Apodemus species.